It's a case of decisions, decisions, decisions

Shoppers face daunting choices

By ALFRED LUBRANO
Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - Contemplate the head-spinning fact that Crest makes 85 different flavors, sizes and formulations of toothpaste, and know this: There's more stuff to choose from than ever before.

And it just keeps coming.

Last week, Coca-Cola announced its 15th variety of Coke, called Coca-Cola Zero, a noncalorie drink described as tasting like Coke Classic and aimed at 18- to 34-year-olds. Not to be outdone, Pepsi — with 11 varieties already on the shelves — rolled out another version of Pepsi One last week, just for 20-year-olds.

Look around and see how many products we're compelled to process in a given day: Budweiser makes six kinds of beer. There are 20 types of Ford cars, SUVs and trucks. Dish Network offers 326 channels. AC Nielsen tracks data on 10,581 cookies.

But somehow, unparalyzed by the plenitude, we don't lock up in the marketplace when we shop. Especially young people, who appear to be particularly adept at sweat-free überconsumerism, born to multitask on this wired planet bulging with superstores.

About 10 years ago, manufacturers developed a new strategy: making new versions of old products, said Valerie Skala Walker, an expert on new-product trends who works at Information Resources Inc., a Chicago-based market-information firm.

The logic of the approach is borne out in marketing data: Send a new item into the world, and it has a 90 percent to 95 percent chance of failing. But introduce a line extension by tweaking a tried-and-true original — platinum-whitening Colgate, say, or Vanilla Coke — and the odds of failure fall to 50 percent, said Richard Lancioni, chairman of the marketing department at Temple University.

And so a frenzy was started.

Toothpaste became the most proliferated product, Lancioni said. Cereal, salad dressing, mustard, shaving cream and razor blades are also among the items most chopped up into mininiches, he adds.

Is it any surprise, then, that while we took 25 seconds to pick a soda just seven years ago, we now use up to 40 seconds on the same task because of the explosion of varieties on the shelves?

Shopper frustration is an unintended consequence of American abundance, according to Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College. Too much choice isn't liberating, Schwartz said; it's tyrannizing.

But "Proliferation will continue," Lancioni said. "That's the trend."

The only true choice, said 73-year-old Jean Williams as she wheeled her shopping cart in South Philadelphia, is to embrace it.

"Take your time when you shop," she advised. "Wear good sneakers. And just have fun."