Less is more? Consumers have fewer choices as brands prune their offerings to focus on best sellers
Plenty of retailers and suppliers are reducing the variety of their offerings to focus instead on what they think will sell best
NEW YORK — How much choice is too much?
Apparently for Coca-Cola, it's about 400 different types of drinks.
That's why the beverage company recently decided to discontinue half of them, shedding brands like Tab, Zico coconut water, Diet Coke Fiesty Cherry and Odwalla juices but still leaving about 200 others to choose from.
It's a move that other businesses are making as well, reducing the variety of offerings from mayonnaise to cereals to cars and instead focusing on what they think will sell best.
Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain that operates stores in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, now has 24 cereal flavors or types, down from 49 in 2019. Edgewell Personal Care Co., the maker of Schick blazers and Banana Boat suntan lotion, has trimmed certain varieties of its anti-bacteria wipes Wet Ones, among others. And Dollar General, based in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, used to stock six different kinds of mayonnaise on its shelves and is now looking to drop a couple of them.
“The consumer is not going to know the difference,” Todd J. Vasos, CEO of Dollar General, told analysts in December. “Actually, it’s going to make her life a little simpler when she goes to the shelf.”
Just a year ago, Kohl's store in Clifton, New Jersey had tables stacked high with sweaters and shirts in a rainbow of colors as well as dress racks crammed with a wide assortment of styles. Now, it boasts a more edited approach — tables have slim piles of knit shirts that focus on fewer colors, and many dress racks have been reduced to just three or four styles.
Under its new CEO Tom Kingsbury, Kohl's has been cutting
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