That's too much man.

My first car, a second hand Beetle came in 3 colours, black, white and I can't remember the third colour. The colour wasn't important as a choice factor but how many sand dunes it could traverse or how many people it could carry home from the pub and never having to worry about putting water in the radiator were important but never mentioned in the brochure. Choosing a car was easy when the parameters of choice were limited in colour and aimed at a market not mature in advertising and accepting of offerings.

So I'm in the US, where "you better have this product or I'm going somewhere else" attitude extends to over 350 models of cars, more than 6000 banks and so many breakfast cereals and that the first 3 letters of the alphabet cover more than 140 packets in the supermarket aisle. Companies have made no secret of their desire "to own the customer" and have ramped up choices because this is what they believe will keep them at the forefront of customer advocacy, choice.

It is also why confusion and abundance of choice are turning ordinary shoppers into "paralysed avoiders". Throw in regret, panic and anxiety about choices made and not made and you have a consumer base looking for a way out of the choice maze. Do you really need hundreds of breakfast cereals to choose from? How many cars are you really going to look at? Don't even get me started on how much money I'd need to have, to contemplate more than a couple of banks, let alone 6000.

One of the issues psychologists are concerned about, are children growing up with abundant choice and never really choosing anything. The so called digital generation is bombarded with so much choice, they end up continually picking, not choosing and end up hoping for the best. As opposed to making a choice and managing the outcomes of that choice, which prepares them to cope with an adult world.

Having said that, a 2010 study by researchers at the University of Bristol found that 47% of adult respondents, thought life was more confusing than it was ten years ago, and 42% reported lying awake at night trying to resolve problems. So no one is finding it as easy as it used to be with retailers fighting for attention at every chance.

Some though, are getting the message and have worked out that selling fewer products at a higher quality can gain significant market share. One of the best examples is Apple, whose entire product range fits on a coffee table. Using only continued design enhancement on those few products it has become the most valuable company in the world. The less is more mentality is slowly becoming a movement within US retail and companies such as Proctor and Gamble experiment with products such as shampoos, taking their Head and Shoulders range from 26 to 15 and improving sales by 10%. This is further emphasised by a 2006 Bain study suggesting that reducing complexity and narrowing choice can boost revenues by 5-40% and cut costs by 10-35%.

So in the end, the most important thing, isn't what we choose but that we make a choice and have the capacity and coping ability to manage and live with that choice. Now, coco crisps, crispy chocs, coco roos, coco pops, coco puffs, cocoa hoots, chocos, chocolate flakes, chocopic, chocolate crunchfuls, chocolate checs, chocolate cherrios, count chocula, chocolate oat crunch, chocolate peanut butter, chocolately peanut butter crunch?????