Consumers Have Fewer Choices as Brands Prune Their Offerings
NEW YORK — How much choice is too much? Apparently for Coca-Cola, it’s about 400 different types of drinks. That’s why the beverage company recently decided to discontinue half of them, shedding brands like Tab, Zico coconut water, Diet Coke Fiesty Cherry and Odwalla juices but still leaving about 200 others to choose from. It’s a move that other businesses are making as well, reducing the variety of offerings from mayonnaise to cereals to cars and instead focusing on what they think will sell best. Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain that …