Too Many Options? The Jam Study and How to Trim Your Offer

More options can reduce buying, but not always

Research has reported that too many options can make people less likely to buy, but the effect does not appear in every setting. The usual starting point is a 2000 study by Iyengar and Lepper, often called the jam study. If you are wondering whether to cut products or plans, it helps to know both what the study found and what has been argued since.

What the jam study reported

The researchers set up a tasting table in a grocery store. At some times it displayed 24 kinds of jam, and at others 6. They compared what shoppers did.

According to the report, more people stopped at the larger display, but a higher share of people bought something from the smaller one. The interpretation was that variety attracts attention but makes deciding harder.

The same paper included other experiments suggesting that people who chose from a larger set were less satisfied with their choice afterward.

Later replications and the debate

The result is cited widely, but later research found that it does not show up consistently. An analysis that pooled many studies reported that the average effect of the number of options was small. Another pooled analysis concluded that the effect appears under some conditions and not others.

The conditions that have been discussed include:

• Whether the buyer knows what they prefer
• Whether the options are organized so they are easy to compare
• Whether the buyer has time to decide
• Whether the options differ greatly in quality

So "fewer options sell more" is not a rule the research supports. A more accurate reading is that a large set becomes a burden when several conditions that make choosing hard are present together.

Deciding how many products or plans to offer

How should a small business decide? It is more practical to look at how hard the choice is for the customer than at the count itself.

When customers know what they want, as with consumables that have clear sizes and model numbers, a long list rarely hurts. When many buyers are new and the differences are hard to see, hesitation is more likely to cost you sales.

A simple process:

1. Count recent orders and find items that almost never sell.
2. Check whether several items cannot be told apart in one sentence.
3. Merge similar items, or highlight one as the default pick.
4. If you cannot cut, add a short question (what is it for, what is your budget) that narrows the list.

Do not cut everything at once. Hide a few items or move them to a secondary page so you can restore them if sales drop.

Ways to help besides cutting

Sometimes you cannot reduce the range. In that case, you can lower the burden by making choosing easier.

• Add entry points sorted by purpose or budget, instead of showing everything at once
• Name one recommended pick for first-time buyers
• Add a short comparison or a sentence that makes the differences clear
• Let people sort by popularity or use

Even without changing the count, a clearer path to a decision can reduce hesitation. This is the same idea as removing, one by one, the conditions the research suggested make choosing hard.

Start by collecting the questions customers actually ask. If many say "which one should I get?", that suggests difficulty in choosing is holding back sales.

What to do next

1. List every product or plan with its recent sales count next to it.
2. Identify the few items that make up most of your revenue.
3. Find pairs whose descriptions sound alike.
4. Merge one pair, or move one of them somewhere less prominent.
5. For one to two months, record the questions you receive and your purchase rate, then compare with the earlier period.

Do not apply the numbers from the research directly to your own shop; check with your own customers first.