More is less..

Most of us remember that we ran out of toothpaste only when we wake up in the morning and go to brush. This is one of the many woes I face, staying alone. But the very first one that hits me early in the morning at least for five days before I go buy a toothpaste. So after snoozing three reminders and squeezing the old toothpaste to its maximum elastic limit, I went ahead to buy a toothpaste.

Now that Hyderabad is a metropolitan city, we have these super-stores on every corner and I found a nearby one for my toothpaste shopping. Now the sad part is I am not good at remembering the minute details of the toothpaste I use and only know the brand. But here in this super-store there was one big stack with toothpastes of different varieties belonging to the same brand. One said it would give white, shining teeth. One said it made the teeth stronger. One had salt in it, one had iodine, one had sodium, magnesium all the elements that we studied in Class X Chemistry. So which one do I pick? Like any basic customer of a product like toothpaste, I would want a good one which serves the basic purpose and in addition is a bit tasty. I wouldn't want to taste something bitter early in the morning, would I. So how do I pick one that caters to my needs without having enough technical knowledge about such a simple daily use product.

So, should I go to a dentist first and find out my dental health status and its requirements and then go shopping? I didn't know. I picked the one which was the brightest in color and came back thinking.

Obviously this post is not to tell my toothpaste woes but the whole incident got me thinking. When in the business of selling a product, is diversifying the product a good thing? By diversifying a product we are essentially customizing our product to different user-bases. But doesn't it affect the sales of the product if the user-base is not really aware of what specificity they are looking for in a product. Wouldn't everybody want bright, shining teeth which are strong and have enough sodium and magnesium in them - the all in one variety? Again something an MBA might be able to answer I guess. May be there are some products which are better off diversified than some which offer a simple straight solution applicable to all the users.

Remember how many kinds of salt packets were there 10 years back? And now? Salt is more about other elements like Na, Mg, Al, Si than just NaCl now.