Can Information Overload Make Better Marketing Information Less Effective?

Many large television screens sit inside a local electronics shop. Next to each screen is a printed paper card. These cards list fifty different technical details. The shop manager believes these extra facts will help customers choose a television faster. 

But this long list of technical features actually creates severe information overload. A buyer stands on the hard tiled floor. He tries to read every line about screen brightness, power usage, and audio quality. After a few details, his brain grows tired and no longer wants to understand any more features.

Because of this sudden information overload, he turns around and decides to buy the TV later. Giving a buyer too many good facts can stop the sale before it even begins.

How Information Overload Stops the Sale

A famous retail study by Sheena Iyengar at Columbia University proves this exact problem. Researchers set up a wooden tasting table inside a large grocery store. First, they placed twenty-four different glass jars of fruit jam on the table. Huge crowds stopped to look at the twenty-four jars. But almost nobody bought a single jar. This clear information overload stopped buyers from picking a single jar.

The researchers then removed eighteen jars, leaving only six jam jars on the table. Sales then suddenly increased dramatically because the decision-making process became simple. Buyers could easily look at six physical jars without getting a headache. A person simply stops responding when he sees too many options at the same time. 

A food brand might print highly accurate health details on its wrapper. But if the printed text creates information overload, a buyer will always put the item back on the shelf.

This same reading problem occurs every day on mobile phones. A health insurance company tries to explain ten different medical benefits on one small phone screen. Every medical fact is highly valuable to the person. 

But reading ten different paragraphs on a small glowing screen creates immediate information overload. The patient reads the first few lines, then gets bored and closes the application completely.

As we noted in our recent article on marketing simplification, removing extra text buttons makes it much faster to tap a glass screen. When a seller adds too many good facts, the screen turns into a crowded block of words. The patient cannot find the most important medical benefit that will make him buy the health insurance.

Too much information overloads the patient and makes him stop reading altogether. He keeps his old insurance policy just to avoid reading the long new document. The company loses an interested buyer simply because it provided too much information at once.

To solve this reading problem, smart business managers stop printing thick booklets. A wise seller understands a simple rule: preventing information overload means hiding less important information until the buyer actually asks for it. A premium car dealer does not hand a fifty-page manual to a driver who has just walked into the showroom.

Instead, the smart dealer hands over a single small card. This clean card shows only a few of the most important car features. This simple approach completely stops information overload. The buyer reads the basic facts in just a few seconds. And if the buyer wants more details later, the dealer gives him the whole manual and also explains everything to the buyer. To maintain steady profits, a brand must keep facts and features limited to avoid information overload. 

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–Written by Rajnish Kumar, a copywriter and strategist with a background in fast-paced journalism, who explores the gap between what brands promise and how consumers actually behave.