Att öka genom att minska - En kvantitativ undersökning av effekterna vid en sortimentsreduktion
For the last 50 years the amount of available consumer goods has exploded in number, due to improvements in production and technology. The problem is that the overall sales of many categories are stagnant and retailers are unwilling to grant the categories more shelf space. Therefore many categories are crowded with products and hard for consumers to navigate in. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of an assortment reduction on several variables relating to assortment perceptions, customer satisfaction and store choice. The study was carried out as an experiment with 127 participants. The results show that most people will not notice a decrease in assortment size, even though we removed up to half of the products. Neither will store choice or consumer satisfaction be affected by the reductions. We do however find results that indicate that consumers are somewhat more willing to shop at the store with the smaller assortment and that they perceive it to be either of higher quality or of lower price. Our recommendation is therefore that both retailers and producers should consider decreasing the amount of available products that they sell or produce in order to enhance both profitability and the consumers' experience.