Costco curation

[elizilla]

I have always said that the reason people like Costco is that the selections are so well curated. Whatever you are looking for, they tend to have very few choices, maybe only one, and it's at a pretty decent price. You can just take what they have there and be done with it, with a fair bit of confidence that you won't wish later that you'd chosen something else.

I have seen a lot of pop science articles where they divide people into satisficers (who make a choice as soon as they find something good enough) and maximizers (who are determined to pick the very best), and they say satisficers are happier overall. Costco encourages satisficer tendencies. You pay your annual fee and commit to being a satisficer, and they make it easy to not regret that choice. No one wonder the store is always packed.

But last time I was in there, I noticed something interesting.

They have a HUGE number of choices, for one type of item. That item? Olives. My local store has a whole aisle full of olives.

Has their marketing research found that olives are something people need a lot of choices to be happy with? Do people really buy enough olives at Costco, to make it worth their while to stock this huge assortment? Costco must have done some research and found a reason to do this; they don't do things randomly. What does it mean?

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I'll have to see about the olive thing next time I'm in my local Costco.

I'm a satisficer for some things. Like if I buy a microwave oven, I care about a handful of things--does it have enough power to cook food according to common cooking directions, does it fit in the counter space allotted for it, does it have a popcorn cycle that works reasonably, does it have a "reheat cold plate of food" cycle. On the other hand, with a computer, I'll pore over newegg.com for hours trying to find the best value-for-money among various components, rather than just walking in to Microcenter or some such place and buying a computer off the shelf.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Does your local Costco always have a huge assortment of olives? Mine doesn't.

K.

[elizilla]

I had never paid any real attention to it before. It is just something that struck me during my last visit. Maybe it's temporary. I guess I will see what happens in the future.