Confusopoly

Business, economics

A confusopoly is an industry or category of products that is so complex that an accurate comparison between products is near-impossible.

If you try buying a mobile phone from a teleoperator, you have unlimited options between phone tiers and texting and data limits. Or if there's a new video game launching, you could get an early-bird version, or the early-bird collector edition, or just the collector edition, or maybe a deluxe version which has some features of the other options but not all of them. If you try to buy insurance or banking/finance products, the options are so confusing that you're just inclined to choose one at random and stick with that for life.

My favorite example is toilet paper. Different brands have a different number of rolls in their packages, and they may have a different amount of paper in each roll, and maybe they'll have a value pack, but the normal pack may have a "get 1 roll free" promotion, but the other brand has a 20% discount, and then there's the matter of softness and thickness... In the end, you just give up and go with the most visually pleasing packaging.

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