Shelves Image by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Too little choice is as harmful as is too much choice.

I recently saw a post on LinkedIn, believe it or not, that said that everyone feels like they’re a marketing expert, so of course I decided to share my 2 cents as well (since I specialize in unsolicited opinions).

There was this company that sold a product. The product was presented as a single option only, no tiers or variants.

And the product didn’t sell.

So someone decided to split some features off the product and introduce those features as a lower tier offer with a much less steep price.

And it started to sell. And the most important thing is that the second tier, the original offering, sold more than the lower tier product.

I think what happened here is that with the introduction of a different kind of choice — instead of buying just one product or not buying anything — the customer could now choose between buying the budget offering and the premium offering, or nothing at all. And this, I think, for some customers at least, made it a little easier to reevaluate their values and go with the finest selection. Because who’d want to feel like a cheapskate?

I wonder what would happen if the company introduced a mid tier offering by adding more features to the premium product and combining those features with the low tier option to create a new product.

Also it might just be that slashing the price in half was the decisive thing here…