Have we reached peak consumer choice?

Consumer choice. It’s fundamental. It’s the psychological lifeblood of the free market. It’s protected and enshrined by competition law. It’s the spectre that hangs in the air of our agencies we set out to build brands with meaningful difference and hold our propositions and ‘ownable benefits’ to account. And in one way or another, it’s the reason why everyone reading this column has a job.

But is choice something consumers always want? Or have we inserted and innovated so much choice into our lives that all this freedom has become exhausting, and even undesirable?

I recently became the laughingstock of my judgemental friendship group after returning from a week-long Mediterranean cruise. It wasn’t the cruise that made me the butt of the joke (I loudly and proudly made the conversion to the high seas all-you-can-eat holiday life some time ago). No, what shocked people was that I had employed the use of a travel agent to make my booking. Revealing that I had used a travel agent out loud somehow classed me as a prehistoric fossil. Sarcastic and unkind questions followed. Did I still ‘tap in’ with an Oyster card? Was I an avid fax user? Did I commission the help of Encyclopaedia Britannica for my research at work? And was I still receiving a copy of the Yellow Pages?

All very droll — but the joke’s on them, not on me. And crucially, I am not alone.

After years of decline, the travel agent market is now exploding year on year. According to The Wall Street Journal, it is projected this year to rise 17 per cent since 2023. I can understand why. Today you can research every destination, every hotel, every meal and every excursion. You can find out precisely what you are getting and review it before you try it through the lens of thousands of others who have enjoyed it just before you. And then you can compare and contrast the cost breakdown of every element before committing via hundreds of different platforms. The trouble is, with great power comes great responsibility. If theoretically I have the capability to craft perfection, the whole thing becomes overwhelming, fast. If every element of the itinerary is a choice I should get right, then the choices become a series of exams to pass or fail. Enter the Travel Agent. Thousands of fraught decisions, reduced to a few failsafe options.

I’m sold, and so are millions of others.

Ok, you might buy that humans are happy to reduce their choices in nice-to-have areas of life like travel, but when it comes to the bigger, life-changing decisions, we hold on dearly to as many options as possible. Not true. This year is the first year where the dating app market recorded a revenue decline with Tinder and Bumble declining by 5.2 per cent and 9.5 per cent respectively. In the UK, usage across major dating apps has fallen 16 per cent since 2024.

Whilst the dating apps are starting to struggle there’s one, highly refined service, that is growing so fast it is impossible to keep up with demand. Traditional matchmaking is growing at 8 per cent annually in the UK. And it figures. How many frogs are we really expected to swipe through before we meet our prince or princess? Sure, when the apps first took off we all got excited about the endless possibilities. But now people are tired of the hundreds of half-started conversations with pictures of people reading books (I have a brain!) and sitting in the park in a circle (I have friends and I sometimes go outside!) It is, literally, endless.

Even in this hunt for a partner, our deepest biological drive, the most important decision we will ever make from an evolutionary perspective, people can still have too much choice. Not everyone is circling back to Yenta, but for those not hitting up a pro-matchmaker, platforms like Thursday that only go live one day of the week are helping dating hopefuls find ways to artificially reduce their choices.

The deliberate reduction of choice is happening all around us in plain sight. If you’ve hit up any festivals this year, you’ll have noticed a very tangible way the twenty-somethings are engineering less choice into their experiences and even into their memories. Standard film cameras have made a big come-back. This is not just about nostalgia. It’s deeper than just the tech element of an aesthetic that has re-embraced Von Dutch and Juicy Couture. When you have a film camera, every moment of a festival is no longer up for grabs. You are structurally limited by film to capture fewer moments. And that feels better. You no longer experience a day through the anxious mental lens of endless potential content options. With fewer opportunities to capture the day, you become much more present inside of it.

Devices, data, and connection haven’t just increased consumer choice. They have exploded it to a level that would have been beyond human comprehension a decade ago.

Perhaps what we are seeing now is the start of the ultimate freedom.

The freedom to choose to not have it all.

Matt Waksman is head of strategy for Droga5 London