DoubleTake Ann Marie HourihaneConsumer choice was supposed to be the fantasy not the nightmare. Do we really need a world in which there are 24 shades of off-white paint?
There is a bit of a flap on at the moment about choice. We have too many choices - between too many things - and our poor little consumer heads are fairly turned by it all, even if you exclude sausages and mobile phones. Initial research seems to have centred on the infinite varieties of milk (skimmed, semi-skimmed, lite, omega-enhanced, vitamin-D-enriched, and so on) and jams - in what way, exactly, does something labelled "conserve" differ from something more informally referred to as "jam"? But there's bread as well. Any Irish restaurant that can boast a fabric napkin seems duty-bound to offer olive, walnut and sun-dried tomato breads, as well as brown soda and white soda and, latterly, spelt. The waiter has to interrupt your monologue to get you to decide between them, and by the time you have worked out the balance between obesity, coeliac disease and your place on the glycaemic index, the fun has kind of gone out it. Yawning avenues of possibility open up around you and you start to feel a little unwell, and then lose the will to live.
Apparently Hegel called this feeling negative infinity, but it has now been termed "consumer vertigo". The customer simply withdraws under the burden of so many complex but ultimately pointless decisions, like Pavlov's dog lying defeated in its harness, its synapses fried by so many stimuli. The summer sales would be a sort of world summit of consumer vertigo, as we all try to choose between things we didn't know we wanted, but realise we cannot afford.
It was once a sign of freedom, in the days of austerity, before anyone said "you're worth it" and there were only three breakfast cereals, but consumer choice has now become a millstone around our necks - or waists, or hips - and is also available in metallic silver. Restaurant customers do not like it when the menu is too long.
It is a bad sign when the makers of the dullest, simplest breakfast cereal - the strangely delicious Weetabix - suddenly go all pluralistic and start producing something called Oatibix as well. This syndrome was first observed in painkillers. Why did they add anything to Disprin? What did Nurofen lack before it became Nurofen Plus? These are the questions that are aroused by an attack of consumer vertigo.
Put it another way - it's hard to live in a world where there are 24 shades of off-white paint. Can anyone actually differentiate between Ivory, Iris, Pearl and Lemon Touch? No wonder we take shelter in the off-white with the most puritan name, and cover our walls with Shaker before having to face the floor-covering dilemma, the heating quandary and the insulation minefield.
Of course it is lovely to live at a time when shoes don't just come in brown or black, and there are plenty of alternatives to shepherd's pie. But now the academics are measuring the stress levels of people confronted with innumerable choices and the results are not good news for retailers - people faced with a lot of choices actually buy less.
Consumer vertigo hits every generation. From the 11-year-old who is bewildered by the permutations presented by her Bratz dolls, to the 75-year-old who cannot find a mobile phone that simply allows her to make and receive telephone calls. While it is understandable that most of us are bewildered by the choices presented in the fields of insurance, pension plans and bog-standard technology, it is more surprising that adult women are flummoxed by trying to winnow out a single wearable lipstick from the mountain of lipsticks available. No wonder the nude look is so popular.
I acknowledge that this is perhaps not the place to examine the full range of sanitary products now for sale. It is safer to say that a multiplicity of choice is not only bewildering, it can kill off the basic service. For example, since every hotel in the country has become a "spa destination", offering dozens of life-enhancing treatments, all involving hot stones, it has become difficult to find a hotel where you can get your hair blow-dried by a professional. I understand that getting your hair blow-dried is hardly in the Ayurvedic tradition, but it was the equivalent of the massage for years and made a lot of people happy.
With such infinite choice available, the strategy chosen by some bewildered consumers is to run for the shelter of a brand name. This is why a lot of technology customers turn to Apple, and a lot of supermarket shoppers end up paying more for the comfort of Marks & Spencer. That irritating line "It's not just summer food, it's M&S summer food" simplifies things wonderfully . . . or at least it is supposed to.
Presumably the books on this subject are designed to make our lives easier (summary: don't sweat the small stuff). There's Straight Choices: The Psychology of Decision Making by Benjamin Newell, David Lagnado and David Shanks, and then there is The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, who at least made the decision to work on his own.