Narrowing the choice: A limited offering at The School of Life

Choice architecture is increasingly being used by policy makers and retailers to influence consumer behaviour. New retail models see a switch to offering limited ranges for sale, turning on its head the traditional view that more choice is better. The School of Life, a new store in London, is taking a curated approach to product range by offering a very limited selection of goods for sale.

Backed by a group of authors including Alain de Botton, the shop will feature no more than 55 titles at any one time in its books section. By narrowing its customers’ options, the store helps avoid confusion and overly complicated purchasing decisions – much like Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein theorise in their book, Nudge, in which they discuss steering (or nudging) consumers into making the right choices.

After years of huge stores made efficient through scale economies, a new model upending this is starting to grow, purposefully reducing ranges, and proving that more choice is not always better.