There’s are many things in Barry Schwart’z Paradox of Choice that are useful from both a professional and personal point of view (particularly as a recovering chronic indecisive person).

But for me the most interesting is the split between Maximisers, and Satisficers.

Maximisers are perfectionists - they have to be convinced that every decision they make is not just okay but the best it could possibly have been. In the digital world where our options are increasingly exponentially all the time, maximising is an ever more time-consuming (and unrealistic) strategy to pursue.

Satisficers have a set of criteria when making a decision - and if they find an option which meets those criteria, they go for it. They don’t worry about the possibility that there may be something better out there, somewhere.

I guess there’s probably a third group of people as well - what I would term impulsives who settle relatively quickly on a decision, going on instinct rather than criteria.

Anyway, from a marketing perspective our default tends to be appealing to the maximiser mentality. We’re forever looking for USPs, features that makes our offer ‘the best’ et cetera.

But perhaps what we should be doing is thinking more about the satisficer - and impulsive - mentalities, and working out how best to appeal to them. After all, they as an audience are far more likely to be swung by communications - whereas the anal maximisers (that word combination should get some interesting people passing by from Google) won’t make a decision based on an ad, they needs hours of gruelling research.

The maximiser/satisficer split is also an interesting one to consider from a segmentation point of view.

And if nothing else, I’ve learned that I have been suffering for years as a maximiser - I am now a full convert to the way of the satisficer.