According to Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College, a little choice is good for you, it can increase your sense of control, but contrary to what we might logically think, having more choice is not better. In fact having too many options to choose from causes a number of problems such as:

* the inability to make a decision at all,
* making a bad decision,
* opportunity cost – worrying about ‘the one that got away’,
* expecting perfection – and getting disappointed instead.

All of these decrease your sense of satisfaction and well-being.

I’m sure you can relate this to your personal lives, but what about the world of work? Schwartz quotes six companies which are already applying the ‘paradox of choice’ principles in their businesses:

* Procter & Gamble (who also featured in this posting)
* CostCo
* Trader Joe’s
* Tesco
* Aldi
* Greek Diners in NYC

According to Schwartz, these companies are already wise to the risk that the customer may choose nothing if faced with too many options, therefore they deliberately offer a more limited selection than they could otherwise do.

It’s an interesting dilemma to be facing, whatever industry you’re in, and it’s one that’s going to get increasingly relevant as consumers become more affluent.

So I looked at the Transport for London website for information about the Oyster card, and costs of ‘normal’ tube/bus/train tickets to compare it to. After searching various web pages, at last I found a 20 (yes twenty) page brochure of tube/bus/train ticket costs for 2007 called ‘Your Guide to Fares and Tickets: Tram, Tube, bus and DLR’. I’m sure to find the answer here I thought. Not a chance. Having trawled my way through tables, capping rates, travel card and season ticket options, I was simply delighted to notice that at the end, as if the previous twenty pages weren’t enough, the brochure listed the titles of five other leaflets I could pick up from the Tube Station if I needed further information. Sacrebleu!

Compare this complete fiasco with my travel experience in France just after Christmas, when I wanted to get from Charles de Gaulle airport to central Paris. I get a 1 page summary of all the ticket options from the information desk. That’s it. One page. Admittedly it wasn’t a nice glossy brochure, in multicolour with graphics and a lots of diagrams. In fact, it was pretty poorly photocopied sheet of paper in black and white. It wasn’t even one page, it was HALF a page (the other half is left blank for notes), and it’s A5 at that. But it did the job superbly. I got the ticket I wanted straightaway.

The French definitely know something about Customer Service that we in the UK don’t. Plus, and this is where they have a huge advantage, they know how to be concise when it really matters. None of this ‘business speak’ that we so love and revere in the UK.

Think about how much time it takes to write a 20 page brochure, check its accuracy, and keep it up-to-date. And all the time (and money) it takes to maintain the myriad of different pricing tariffs that the brochure tries to explain. According to the Economic and Social Research Council, the good news is that UK productivity has increased substantially across each of the last four decades. However, they also quote data from the Office for National Statistics which shows that France has higher labour productivity per worker than the UK (see the paragraph called ‘Comparative Productivity: International), and this has been the case for many years. Another example of where ‘less is more’.