I ordered a pizza I didn’t want; the menu had already won

I walked into a café recently to grab a few slices of pizza. Nine varieties of pizza with mushrooms, margherita, farmhouse, etc. and a handful of others with names I had to read twice to understand were displayed on the menu. Under the pressure, to finally order a pizza, I chose my least favourite of them – mushroom pizza and guilt, regret and disappointment in varying degrees hit me.

Somehow, I was unable to trust myself to decide what I wanted to eat. I often find myself turning to the waiter and asking: “What do you recommend?”

Rather than figuring out what I want, I outsource the decision entirely. The menu had defeated me.

It’s the paradox in plain sight In the year 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper carried out a study. They put on two jam-tasting tables, one with 24 different jams, and the other with six. Customers swarmed the table with 24 jams, but ended up buying ten times more jam from the table with only six options.

More choice, less action

The paradox of choice is an everyday occurrence, and it’s been quietly eating away at conversions, boosting returns and diluting brands for decades. When faced with too many options, rather than taking up the challenge, our brains step away. Instead of picking the right decision and risking regret, it picks a randomly assigned, regret-prone decision (i.e., the pizza has mushrooms) or delegates a choice (i.e., asks the waiter, abandons the shopping cart, walks out the shop). Both have damaging effects for the business.

The 80/20 truth brands are refusing to accept

This is a fact that has worked across markets, across borders and across hundreds of years of trade: Approximately 20 per cent of your products will bring in 80 per cent of your turnover.

It is the Pareto principle, and in the majority of brands, this fits their product list perfectly:

The top 20 per cent of SKUs keep the range alive. They generate turnover, they produce the reviews, they bring customers back time and time again, and they carry the brand’s image and authority. The other 80 per cent? They simply exist. They occupy shelf space, warehouse space and marketing funds. They confuse customers and eat into the revenue of products that do make money. The painful conclusion is obvious. The majority of companies use most of their time managing products that bring a fraction of the overall return and that they are, in essence, working to preserve 20 per cent of revenue, which really doesn’t exist.

The evolution of such brands

Product line proliferation does not occur in a single leap. It is gradual. There are good intentions and good reasons for new variants, different colours or regional flavour editions that should have already been discontinued. Soon, from 3 products, you find yourself with 47 different SKUs.

The feeling is understandable. Additional SKUs mean more customers to reach, more people that you fulfill and more revenue. But this may be true for the short-term only. However, they cause paralysis when selecting products on the shelf, confusing marketing communications and stress on logistics networks. And above all, they hide the products that really do the work. When a brand does everything, it risks doing nothing at all.

The brands that cut and won

In 1997, Steve Jobs rejoined Apple and immediately slashed product lines by 70 per cent. It appeared disastrous at first. In retrospect, it was the first move of one of the most valuable companies in history; an explicit decision to stop spreading wide and spread deep instead. Procter & Gamble tried something similar in 2014 and removed more than 100 of its brands to focus on its top 65. Margins went up. Growth increased – less number of products, more profits.

We see this consistently, even with smaller brands. A DTC skincare business can trim from 30 products to 12, and see average order value increase, because customers can finally easily shop its wares. A B2B SaaS company can close deals more quickly because the sales conversation gets simpler when legacy price tiers are removed.

Clarity leads to confidence, which leads to sales.

Where AI fits in

What does the waiter I asked to give us a recommendation have to do with all of this? That instinct to cede judgment to someone who knows more is precisely the space Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now set to fill. When a brand does not reduce its catalogue, intelligent AI-driven personalization can emulate the waiter, surfacing the two or three products most relevant to this customer, at the right moment, based on what you’ve shown, what you seem to like and who you appear to be. You might always hover on the vegetarian section of the menu, so now you’re shown three options with confidence. AI-driven personalization is a solution for complexity, not an excuse to generate more of it. The winners are those who not only use data to recommend but also to identify what to cut. What SKUs are moving slowly? What has the highest return rates? What do we only sell during massive discounts? The data collected is quietly stored in a dashboard.

What this means for brands

Think about your product line, and ask yourself: If you were starting this business today, knowing everything you know, would you have launched this same range? Chances are, the answer is no.

Use the Pareto principle. Find your 20 per cent. Guard it fiercely, invest heavily, and communicate it as boldly as you can. Then, have the difficult conversation about what the remaining 80 per cent is really costing you – not just in dollars, but in customer clarity, brand confidence, and operational efficiency.

The businesses that are succeeding are not those with the most choice. They are the ones with the bravery to offer less, and then back it without question. Less, if done right, gives brands more – more revenue, more trust and more clarity. Hopefully, eventually, fewer customers will leave with a pizza they don’t even really want.