My husband usually buys our toothpaste from Costco. If you shop at Costco, you know that you are making a Long Term Commitment to any product you buy there, simply due to the quantities and sizes of everything. Unfortunately for us, twice he bought the wrong flavor of toothpaste. After enduring six months of awful-tasting toothpaste—morning, noon and night—I took over Toothpaste Purchasing Responsibilities for our household.

On my first toothpaste shopping excursion, I found myself overwhelmed with the number of choices available. There’s Gel Tartar. Max White with Mini Bright Strips. Advanced. Max Fresh. Proclinical. Extreme Clean. Our supermarket has an entire aisle dedicated to toothpaste. The choices are overwhelming. I. Just. Wanted. Toothpaste. The old fashioned kind. Remember it? It cleaned your teeth, helped prevent cavities and tasted minty.

The experience made me realize that a dizzying array of choices is a prevalent phenomenon in every aspect of life. Marketers have developed products and services to meet smaller and smaller customer segments.

Citibank, however, is one financial services company that is bucking that trend. The company recently made an announcement that Less Can Mean More. As a result, Citibank will no longer offer a long list of different checking accounts. Instead it will offer just three kinds of checking – a basic option, a mid-tier option and a premium option.

The 90s can be characterized a number of different ways, but from a marketing standpoint I think of them as The Era of One-to-One Marketing. Granted, people with sensitive gums are probably wildly excited about finally being able to buy Toothpaste for Sensitive Gums. But the irony of the situation is that people need toothpaste, even if there isn’t an ideal toothpaste on the market for them. Seriously, are you going to skip brushing your teeth just because you don’t have the right toothpaste? Probably not. (Although I realize that a dentist might argue that you wouldn’t brush for as long as you should.) And in the same way, most people need a checking account. (And here the banker might argue that a customer in a one size fits all account is least likely to buy additional products.)

Granted, most people can probably navigate the toothpaste aisle and eventually make a choice. But selecting toothpaste is easier than selecting the right financial product. Anyway, my own decision paralysis aside, I’ve often wondered what happens when consumers have TOO many options. At a certain point does it just get too complicated and people make their decision by not making any decision at all? Or do they go to another company where the choices don’t overwhelm them?

Personally, I like the idea of a basic account that customers can add services to, based on their needs. BBVA Compass’ Build to Order Checking is a great example of this. Customers get a basic package, plus two free services. Anything above that is $2 per month, and customers can change the services as often as they like. Isn’t that true one-on-one marketing—when the customer gets to pick the services?

There’s a big difference between letting the customer make a choice and forcing the customer to buy a pre-packaged product with options and features selected by the bank.

Enough about toothpaste. Have you been in the orange juice aisle lately?

Click here to read more »