Wal-mart recently announced that they would be stocking fewer brands on their shelves. This isn’t a new issue. Last year, the Wall Street Journal described how retailers were reducing shelf space for different items. There were other retailers mentioned, over six months later when Wal-mart mentions that certain brands would be discontinued from their stores, then more people take notice.

Consumer choice is a good thing. Generally when the consumers stop buying items then that is a sign to the manufacturer that consumers don’t like their goods. Instead, since the market has become so competitive, it is important to cut the losses. For big box stores, items that sell the fewest units are discontinued. They may still be made by a company but not available to consumers. Where does that leave a person who really has “fallen in love with” a particular brand that has fallen out of favor because other brands are better advertised. This doesn’t mean that certain brands are necessarily better because they are available in a store, it just means that the greater the brand recognition – through marketing, then the greater the response by sellers.

Some of the choices that consumers were offered were not real choices but repackaged versions of the same. When items that are truly different aren’t being carried anymore where will a consumer turn? The internet. The are extraneous that choices will go away -think the different varieties of soft drinks – Cherry Dr. Pepper, Coke Zero, vanilla flavored?

Since consumers are holding on to their purse strings a little tighter, the additional options aren’t as enticing as they used to be which means that we will have to get used to fewer choices for some items and greater choices for others. We will survive this. Prior to the late 90s cars came in a wider array of colors and styles from the factory. Now there are fewer than 10 for most makes.

Reducing the choices offered to consumers allows us to focus on the important things (e.g. does the product really work). Then we can shift from the extrinsic value we are encouraged to believe a product has.