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- How Overchoice Produces Consumer Stress
By Melissa Medley-Scott, CME

The robust economies of today were largely built on the proliferation of choices. The notion of "more is better" became genetic code for twentieth-century consumers enjoying these economies. For generations, product researchers and their marketing departments have worked hand-in-hand to develop varieties of products that appeal to each and every member of their target audience - with disregard for the plethora of choices they were giving their consumer. According to Peter Sealey and Steven M. Cristol, these companies who were being "customer sensitive" might have cost their company millions in sales. In their book entitled Simplicity Marketing: End Brand Complexity, Clutter, and Confusion, (Free Press, October 2000), the authors claim that consumers have reached their manageable threshold for making decisions and end up in a state of frustration and confusion. (Not exactly the desirable frame of mind you desire for your consumer at the point of sale.)

Amid this frustration and confusion is a win-win opportunity to 1) de-stress customers and 2) build brand equity. Known as a "pioneering brand strategist," Sealey believes that the next generation of marketing successes will belong to the brands whose marketers simplify and reduce stress in their consumers' lives.

Brands can play a core role in stress reduction, especially when brand managers understand and fully leverage brands as time savers and simplifiers. Smart marketers streamline product lines to improve business performance while bringing more clarity to the consumer's world. In the context of too much choice, brand becomes the shortest, most efficient path to potential satisfaction and tension release. Brands are playing a bigger role as consumers use them as simplified shortcuts to a purchase decision. One-think shopping - the safest way to cut corners in making choices.

In Simplicity Marketing, Cristol and Sealey instruct marketing managers to test the stress level of their brand. Then based on their findings, encourage them to implement the "4 R's" strategy of simplification: Replace (substituting and consolidating), Repackage aggregating and integrating), Reposition (simplifying), and Replenish (fulfilling).

Using real world examples, Simplicity Marketing describes how the 4 R's interact with each other to relieve consumer stress and how these strategies can perform individually or in combination to build brand loyalty. "The message for marketers is clear. Human capacity for choice is not an infinitely expandable commodity. The good news is that there are nearly endless possibilities for creative ways to reduce customer stress," said Sealey.

As an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the Haas School of Business of the University of California at Berkeley and Management Consultant to numerous global firms including Visa U.S.A., United Parcel Service, Hewlett-Packard, SOMA Research and Technology, and the Anheuser-Busch Company, Sealey more than understands the paradigm shift that has occurred in the marketing world.

"Simplicity marketing utilizes a whole different approach than empirical marketing. Any strategy over time has a point of diminishing return. I strive to provide companies and my students a new framework or method in which they can create strategy and approach marketing."

Dr. Sealey will be honored as the Sales and Marketing Executives International Educator of the Year at the SMEI 66th Annual "Marketing Magic!" Conference this September in Orlando, Florida.