Exhausted by choice, Aussie shoppers go back to what they know and trust

EXHAUSTED by an avalanche of choice, Australian shoppers are returning to basics, buying brands they trust and know.

Less is more when it comes to choosing a brand. Picture: Thinkstock

EXHAUSTED by an avalanche of choice, Australian shoppers are returning to basics, buying brands they trust and know.

New data by market researchers AustraliaSCAN shows consumers are suffering from choice fatigue and it's causing a back-to-basics trend in an attempt to avoid the plethora of options.

"It's a fatigue, an exasperation, and then you simply retreat to the familiar," says demographer Bernard Salt.

"Amid a forest of options you'll look for (the product you know and trust), you won't consider the broad range."

Mr Salt said the boom in choice - from technology to the supermarket aisles - was driven by the desire of people to feel "special and unique".

"We all want to believe that there's a product that meets our specific needs, that you're not just part of the broad mass market," he said.

However, the fact we are also increasingly time poor means we are being overwhelmed.

Social analyst David Chalke says people can end up feeling "out of control".

"There's plenty of psychological research that shows the ideal is somewhere around three-to-five things to choose from," he said.

"Get to 10 and people become incapable of making a choice, completely incapable.

"Therefore (we seek out) somebody who whittles it down or puts the (choices) in a structured way such that I can easily work out where to go."

Ibis World senior industry analyst Emily Witham said the supermarket aisles in particular had become increasingly saturated in part due to the gigantic rise of gourmet foods.

"Producers across a whole range (of products) have not wasted any time in creating a vast array of brands with different supplements added or value-added elements ... to capture every (audience)," Ms Witham said.

The upside, she said, was that brands were having to do a lot more to win over their audience and the result was increasingly better affordability for consumers.

The social trends survey of 2000 people found most agreed there was too much choice (62 per cent).

More than 40 per cent agreed that life seemed to be getting out of control, while 54 per cent felt they had no time to do things they enjoyed.

NO TIME TO STRESS

- 54 per cent agreed there was no time to do things that they enjoyed

- 20 per cent found that managing their time was more stressful than the previous year

- 77 per cent aspired to having time to do the things that they enjoyed

- 62 per cent agreed that there were too many choices

- 43 per cent believed that life seemed to be getting out of control

Source: AustraliaSCAN