Is too much choice bad for business and your health?

By now, those of you who have followed me know that I am a huge fan of the TED Talks series. And if you don't know what this is:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

The tag line says it all -- "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers".

Well, I wrote a post many months ago on The Price of Perfectionism, and made reference to Barry Schwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice".

And here in the video below, from TED, is Barry doing his 18-minute thing, helping us understand why too much choice is a bad thing. Not only for ourselves, but also for the people we hope to attract and retain as patients or customers. Whether we are talking about product or service offerings, or website design.

Perhaps a poor analogy, but have you taken a multiple choice exam recently? How fried did your brain feel when confronted with all those options and you weren't absolutely certain of the answer?

Remember -- the confused mind always says "no".

(Thanks to Akshay Kapur for pointing out this video).

Update on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 01:54PM by Philippa Kennealy

Coincidentally I saw this blog post later today that reinforces the ideas in my post:

Megabranding: The Purple Oreo Problem

Comments

[Akshay Kapur]

This video has that effect where everyone's been thinking the same thing and someone (in this case Barry Schwartz) finally stands up and says it. Well.