Fewer choices, and consumers just don’t care

Do we really need 40 different varieties of toilet paper? asked Annie Gasparro. “For years, companies added choices,” filling supermarket shelves with more goods that could “cater to the whims of more people.” The average U.S. food retailer now stocks about 33,000 different items, nearly four times as many as it did in 1975. That includes 400 different types of Campbell’s Soup, quadruple the number it offered in 1984. It’s not just food: Automakers last year “offered more than 605,000 vehicle configurations even before taking different colors into account.” We’ve become “addicted to endless varieties.” But the pandemic might have been a wake-up call. Panic buying and supply disruptions

emptied store shelves and forced businesses to trim back options and simplify operations. The response from buyers, who were happy with a small lineup of familiar brands, has now forced some executives to consider the unthinkable: Whether American consumers actually “need such vast choices” going forward. So far, customers don’t seem to be missing the wedge salad and French onion soup at Outback Steakhouse. McDonald’s partially credited its leaner menu—fewer salads and bagels—with reducing wait times by 25 seconds. The lesson that many companies are drawing from not being able to please everyone in the pandemic is that maybe they didn’t need to try so hard in the first place.