The fault always lies with Mercadona, strategy or coincidence?

To say that the current crisis is helping and has helped Mercadona achieve the success it currently has would not be totally fair because Mercadona's success is now more than five years old. However, it must be recognized that the current economic situation is causing price sensitivity to not be the main purchasing motivation of a market segment, but rather all or almost all consumer segments have price as a variable of choice. That is, if the price is drivers main purchase for the majority of consumers, Mercadona has hit the nail on the head and can find in this part of the reason for its success.

In any case, attributing all of Mercadona's success to segmentation and price sensitivity would be a conclusion or a simplistic view of reality. There is, at least, a second factor known as the “paradox of choice” (paradox of choices) that explains another part of the success of the distribution brand. Barry Schwartz[Yo] maintains that well-being is achieved with greater independence, greater individual freedom, and that to have greater freedom of choice you need the greatest number of possible options to choose from.

But the paradox according to Schwartz is that the more options we have to choose from, the greater dissatisfaction and guilt will be generated and therefore the greater unhappiness it will cause in the consumer. He exemplifies the paradox by explaining that, when he bought a pair of jeans a few years ago, he only had one option to choose from. Having only one option did not generate anxiety about the choice, nor guilt for the potential error of not having chosen well. When you only have one purchase option you use less time because you do not evaluate the alternatives; they do not exist. Once the product has been chosen and purchased, there is neither dissonance nor regret in the choice since you cannot have chosen any other pair of jeans, there is no option either. In the case of making a mistake in the choice (the pants do not fit well, for example), our feeling of guilt will be relative, rather low, the most likely thing is that we will blame the brand for not fitting as expected.

It is evident that this will happen more in purchases of high-involvement products but not so much in those of routine or habitual purchase, however, the current situation causes the price as a purchase driver to convert some purchases of habitual behavior into involvement purchases.

If this theory is true, Mercadona would be right in its reference simplification policy. Only MD and the category leader (although not always the leader), on the one hand satisfy the demand for low prices and on the other solve the paradox of choice. Could this be a marketing strategy designed by Mercadona or pure coincidence?

Is Apple following the same strategy? So what are brands like Danone or Bimbo doing, for example, offering so much variety?

The answer is not easy but in our opinion, it is evident that the paradox is not always true and is only partially true. On the one hand, it seems clear that consumers feel greater independence and freedom the more choice options we have, and on the other, that there is an overestimation of the consumer about their ability to manage and deal with all possible options.

Part of the solution could then be to properly categorize the offer so that the consumer: