When you deal with a range of products day in and day out it is understandable that you might want to dream up ways of surprising your customers.

Rather than confront them with the same old lines of products, how about adding in something that stops them in their tracks.

What about doing away with all those dull categories, and lining things up according to price; wouldn’t it be better to shake things up a little?

The answer is, it depends.

Generally speaking, giving your customers an easy way to navigate through a large number of choices is the way to go.

There have been numerous studies conducted about the problems too much choice creates. Beyond those, other studies have found that, when people are asked to make a choice from a large range, they are more satisfied if the range has been clearly classified.

Even if the classifications are meaningless!

When people at a food court were asked to choose coffee from a large list, they were equally satisfied if they had chosen from one divided into A, B and C as they were when the more meaningful classifications of ‘Mild’, ‘Dark Roast’ and ‘Nutty’ were used.

Researchers believe that providing categories increases the sense of self-determination people feel when choosing from a large selection: it helps people perceive differences amongst the available options.

Essentially, the categories divide a large problem into more manageable chunks. People can cope with making a decision from a smaller set three times, and then choosing between the three prevailing options.

The only exception, and this is where the it depends comes into it, is when people have a large amount of knowledge about the products.

My best friend owns a guitar shop. As a guitarist myself I love wandering round and seeing what he has in stock. The vast majority of people who go to his store are like me.

However, at Christmas, when people visit looking for a guitar they are buying as a present, you can see them looking baffled. Unless there is a big sign over a suitable starter pack saying, “Buy This” or one of his knowledgeable staff spots them and gets involved, people are likely to walk away empty handed.

This tallies with another study that distinguished between expert and non-expert consumers.

When researchers compared how the two groups behaved they found that experts breezed past information – even if it was potentially new and useful – whereas non-experts applied a lot more thought to the task of choosing.

With a wealth of associations in their unconscious minds experts feel comfortable and select reflexively. Non-experts have far less to link to, so must go through the more time-consuming and mentally draining process of conscious consideration.

Against this background, experts actually like to be surprised by finding something incongruous – it shakes them out of their automated mental state. Unfortunately, the same incongruity is likely to disorientate the non-expert shopper.

So when it comes to considering how to categorise your store, the most important question to ask is:

• How expert (or not) are the customers shopping this category in my store (or at my website) likely to be?

If you do cater to experts it’s also worth considering how you can cater to the very different needs of non-experts.

Sources: Mogilner et al. The Mere Categorization Effect: How the Presence of Categories Increases Choosers’ Perceptions of Assortment Variety and Outcome Satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Research, 2008; 35 (2): 202 DOI: 10.1086/588698
Poynor et al. Smart Subcategories: How Assortment Formats Influence Consumer Learning and Satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Research, 2009; 091216102428059 DOI: 10.1086/649906

Image courtesy: Pip R. Lagenta