A couple years ago, I got a neat little camera, a Canon SD200. I’ve been wanting to get a second camera and I really would have liked to get the same one, but it’s not available. Canon has moved on to newer models.
The trouble is I can’t tell them apart. The two in this picture were released a week apart, they look the same, and have many identical features. The prices aren’t even very different.
I have looked over the many SD choices on Amazon, but I could never make up my mind.
Barry Schwartz calls this The Paradox of Choice, which he sums up nicely in this TEDTalk:
“All of this choice… produces paralysis, rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all.”
I didn’t end up with a Canon, as much as that was my intention in the beginning. There were just too many to choose from.
While I can’t speak for Canon directly, one of the reasons you see this is because manufacturers make unique products for different retailers. My wife worked a large design house and participated in the design of washing machines. During that process, they had to make 5 unique control panels, one for Target, one for Best Buy, one for Circuit City, etc. (those stores are probably wrong, but you get the idea). The primary reason for this was to discourage price matching, and was a direct leveraging move on the retailer’s side. I’m sure GE would rather produce one product, but the large stores refuse to carry products that aren’t unique, in order to give them pricing freedoms, and not be held to their price matching promises if a competitor runs a special.
While this is disturbing in its underlying philosophy, what really makes it obvious is that now with the internet, all of those unique products show up on a single search result, and suddenly, the consumer is looking at near identical products, with small token differences, and similar price points. Tis bad news.
Now, like I said, I can’t confirm this is the case with Canon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was somehow connected.
Jason — very interesting. As usual, there’s a reason for most every decision. Just maybe not one that you or I would deem good.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Take a look at HP inkjet printers for another bad example of this.