Anticipated Buyer's Remorse

I had a interesting conversation with Bill M this morning about the huge number of features we now have It makes product demos challenging because there so much to learn and demos can go on forever if they are not focused.

It reminded me of an experiment that showed that people buy less if presented with too many options:

"On one day, shoppers at an upscale food market saw a display table with 24 varieties of gourmet jam. Those who sampled the spreads received a coupon for $1 off any jam. On another day, shoppers saw a similar table, except that only six varieties of the jam were on display. The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time came to purchase, people who saw the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people who saw the small display."

Some have criticized this experiment and junk social science but from personal experience, it can be paralyzing when confronted with many options. Too much choice makes us worry that we won't pick the right thing and regret our purchase: anticipated buyer's remorse.

This is why Vanilla and most other software companies present pricing bundles. We group together a bunch of features and create a small number of packages. We are looking to create enough choice so that every customer can easily identify their Goldilocks plan, the plans that is just right.

The other day, I was looking for an astronomy app for my iPhone. I just want to point my phone at the night sky and see on the screen what star or planet I'm looking at. A took a quick look at the app store and found many choices. These apps have been around for a couple years and now do all kinds of other stuff, for example some have built in educational videos or photo galleries that would be of interest to my kids. I ended up not making a $5 purchase because i now needed to spend time doing a bunch of research to pick the best one.

When conducting product demo I think there is a risk of overwhelming some prospects. Here's how I would choose how to prioritize a demo:

Prioritize showing the features that will help the prospect achieve the stated business objectives. Then, prioritize features that differentiate us. Then features that can create a wedge between us and the competition.