Competition and variety

 Competition via varietyfrom Tim Taylor of Conversable Economist “ A final issue is called the “paradox of choice,” which is the idea that consumers who are overloaded by choices may be less happy with their ultimate choice, because of a fear that they missed out on something better, or may even decide to shy away from buying at all. There is limited evidence of this happening in some contexts. For example, one study looked at restaurant delivery platform that kept adding more options. Up to some point, the additional options brought in more business; beyond that point, additional options seemed to discourage possible consumers and brought in less business. But from a broad perspective, the appetite for additional variety in consumer packaged goods seems to be very strong, and so the pattern of large firms using variety to compete within narrow categories of products seems likely to continue.”