It’s nice to have options. Sometimes it’s not so nice to have too many.
According to FMI – The Food Industry Association, the average grocery store carries 31,795 unique items. Larger superstores can offer 60,000, with the largest store selections numbering well into six figures.
Consider the cereal aisle. If you’ve ever found yourself scanning the shelf after shelf of options in every size and variety, is it any wonder some of us are simply overwhelmed?
A new survey finds that more than a third of grocery shoppers regularly experiences “aisle anxiety” when undertaking what ought to be a simple task.
In a survey commissioned by Traditional Medicinals, Talker Research surveyed 2,000 Americans and found that many are “overthinkers,” in life and in the grocery aisles. The average person reports making about 50 decisions a day, and a quarter often find themselves stressed out about making even the most simple choices.
That stress intensifies at the grocery store.
36% of the shoppers surveyed said they suffer “aisle anxiety,” overwhelmed with choices or feeling rushed to decide when crowded by others. Survey respondents reported spending an average of four minutes deliberating each item they buy. Half of all respondents consider everything they buy to be an investment, so most say they want to be completely certain that every item they choose is completely right for them.
And four minutes of deliberation for each and every item in your cart could certainly make for a very long and stressful grocery shopping trip.
This sentiment apparently hasn’t changed much over the past decade. Back in 2014, a Consumer Reports survey reported on the phenomenon of “option overload” at the grocery store. Nearly 80% of those surveyed had noticed “an especially wide range of choices” in their local grocery store. 36% found themselves “overwhelmed by the information they had to process to make a buying decision.” And 5% were so overwhelmed, they often found themselves making no purchase at all and simply giving up.
A separate survey at about the same time found that, despite the wide variety of items available, the average shopper buys from a narrow range of just 260 different items over the course of a typical year.
The phenomenon can put retailers in a bind. They want to make sure they offer exactly the products their customers want, but that often means weeding out the products that don’t sell as well. But retailer efforts to “rationalize” their assortment by thinning out some of the selection inevitably results in backlash, when the shoppers who preferred those thinned-out items complain.
So is it better to just offer some of everything and let the overwhelmed shopper figure it out?
There may be a reason that limited-assortment stores like ALDI are growing in popularity. With an average of just 1,400 different items available for sale, ALDI promises to “simplify the shopping experience” for those who might suffer anxiety in larger stores. “Our team hand-selects and curates the best products, so that our shoppers are not overwhelmed by choice,” ALDI explains.
Traditional Medicinals’ goal in commissioning this latest survey was to highlight the labeling on its herbal and medicinal teas. Shoppers “want to make the ‘right’ choice, but they’re often faced with overwhelming options,” Chief Purpose Officer Jamie Horst said in a statement. Labels like organic, Fair Trade and Fair for Life “are designed to do that detective work for shoppers,” reassuring them that they’re making a good choice and eliminating some of the paralysis of indecision.
That may help the next time you walk down your grocery store’s tea aisle. But there are many more aisles, many more decisions, and tens of thousands of options to consider before you head to the checkout. And even after you leave, there are many more choices to be made in daily life. For the average person who’s faced with dozens of decisions a day – one could only wish that everything came with labels to help you decide.
Image source: osseous 
