Choice

2008.11.21   prev     next

Suppose a new corporation came out tomorrow called, I don’t know, Messiah Co. or something else. And they just started cranking out products in almost every field, you know, washing machines, computers, phones, cars, houses, lawnmowers — everything. And everything they made was radically better than what anybody else was making, but sold for about the same price, or only a little bit more. Or maybe sometimes even less.

Consumers would flock to that. They would love it; they would absolutely love it. It would be fantastic. And there would be some people who would rail against it, saying, “Why are consumers giving up choice? We thought consumers liked choice.” Well the answer to those people is — well, there are two answers. First of all, consumers do like choice, and they’re choosing, you know, Messiah Co.’s products. They do like choice, and they’re making their choice — their choice is Messiah Co. And then, of course, the other answer is, the only reason consumers like choice is so they can choose what they like better. And if one company is making something radically better than everybody else, then that’s the obvious choice.

That’s all there is to it — that’s the only reason consumers like choice. Even consumers who are creeped-out by the idea of buying everything from a single company with a creepy name like Messiah Co. would do it anyway just because they didn’t want to miss out on something so much better than what anyone else was offering.

Well, that’s kind-of like the situation that Apple’s in. Apple makes the iPhone, and the pro-RIM and pro-Microsoft pundits say, “consumers want choice” — you know, they’re not going to buy this one model of iPhone when they can choose from ten different models of Android and Windows Mobile phones. Well the answer is, if the iPhone is dramatically better than those other phones, then yeah, they are going to choose the iPhone, for the most part. And the idea that the consumers want choice just for choice’s sake is simply false. Consumers want choice to the extent that choice makes better options. And then they want to choose those better options. They don’t want to choose a different option just to “maintain choice.” They want to choose whatever’s better; that’s what choice is about.