The horticultural industry loves information.

We put it everywhere.

On plant tags.

On signs.

In catalogues.

On websites.

Inside QR codes.

On care sheets.

In databases.

And, of course, inside the heads of the people working in garden centres.

We have accumulated an extraordinary amount of knowledge about the plants we sell.

Botanical names.

Hardiness zones.

Bloom periods.

Growth habits.

Mature dimensions.

Exposure.

Soil preferences.

Pruning requirements.

Breeding histories.

Disease resistance.

Pollinator value.

There is an understandable assumption beneath all of this:

If consumers know more, they will make better decisions.

Sometimes they will.

But consumer research reveals a more interesting possibility.

Sometimes the problem is not that the customer has too little information.

It is that the information they have does not help them answer the question they are actually trying to answer.

That distinction might be one of the most important communication opportunities in horticultural retail.

The Customer Is Not Taking an Exam

Imagine a customer standing in front of a clematis.

The tag tells them:

Clematis ‘Rouge Cardinal’

Pruning Group 3.

Height 2.5 to 3 metres.

Full sun to partial shade.

Hardy to Zone 4.

Blooms July through September.

Moist, well-drained soil.

All of this may be perfectly accurate.

But what is the customer trying to decide?

Perhaps:

Will this cover the ugly section of fence beside my patio?

That is a very different question.

The information may contain the answer.

But the customer has to assemble it.

Three metres.

Climbing habit.

Sun.

Flowering period.

Pruning.

Somewhere inside those facts lies the conclusion:

Yes, this is suitable for what you want to do.

The industry has supplied the ingredients.

The customer still has to cook dinner.

Not All Information Is Equally Useful

Consumer researchers use the term diagnosticity to describe how useful a piece of information is for making a particular judgment.

This is a wonderfully practical idea.

Information is not valuable merely because it is true.

Its usefulness depends on the decision being made.

Suppose you are buying a used car.

Knowing the colour is information.

Knowing the engine has completed 300,000 kilometres is also information.

Both are factual.

They are not equally diagnostic if your question is:

How likely is this car to last another five years?

The same principle applies to plants.

Botanical name:

Accurate.

Pot size:

Accurate.

Patent information:

Accurate.

Breeder:

Accurate.

But if the customer is trying to determine:

Will this survive my Calgary winter?

one piece of information suddenly becomes disproportionately important.

Hardiness.

The consumer does not necessarily need less information.

They need the right information to become prominent at the right moment.

The Remarkable Experiment About Useless Information

Tom Meyvis and Chris Janiszewski conducted a fascinating series of experiments on consumer beliefs about product benefits.

They gave consumers information about products containing both relevant and clearly irrelevant attributes.

Logically, irrelevant information should have been ignored.

It wasn’t.

The researchers found that adding irrelevant information could actually weaken consumers’ belief that the product would deliver an important benefit.

This became known as a dilution effect.

Think about how strange that is.

Suppose you are trying to decide whether a medication will relieve headaches.

You receive strong evidence that it does.

Then someone gives you several additional facts that have nothing to do with headache relief.

Those irrelevant facts should contribute zero.

But human beings do not always process information like spreadsheets.

The extra material can dilute the impact of the useful information.

Now return to the plant tag.

The critical message might be:

Hardy to Zone 3.

Around it are fourteen other pieces of information.

The tag is not wrong.

It may simply be asking one important fact to compete with thirteen less important ones.

More Information Can Make the Important Information Smaller

This is a peculiar feature of communication.

Suppose a sign contains one message:

Blooms all summer.

That message occupies the entire mental stage.

Now add:

Botanical name.

Item number.

Pot size.

Height.

Spread.

Exposure.

Zone.

Logo.

Breeder name.

QR code.

Program name.

Website.

Plant patent.

Water requirements.

The original message has not disappeared.

But it has become smaller.

Not physically, necessarily.

Psychologically.

This is why communication cannot be evaluated simply by asking:

Did we include the information?

A better question is:

Did the customer notice which information mattered?

Those are very different standards.

Consumers Rarely Process Everything

For decades, consumer researchers have studied how people process product information.

One of the foundational thinkers in this field was James Bettman, whose work treated consumer decision-making as an information-processing problem.

The basic reality is unavoidable.

Consumers possess limited:

time

attention

working memory

motivation

category knowledge

They therefore do not process every available attribute equally.

They simplify.

They focus.

They infer.

They use only portions of what is available.

A 2024 review in the Journal of Consumer Research describes how information-processing research evolved precisely because actual consumers do not behave like perfectly calculating economic machines.

That should be especially relevant to horticulture.

Because we operate in a category with remarkably high informational density.

A plant is simple to look at.

It can be complicated to describe.

Expertise Changes What Information Means

Here is another problem.

Experts and beginners do not merely know different amounts.

They process information differently.

Jiewen Hong and Brian Sternthal investigated how prior product knowledge changes the way consumers respond to information.

Their research found that people with high and low levels of category knowledge can respond differently to the same information presentation. Processing fluency, how easily the information can be understood and worked with, helped explain those differences.

That has a fascinating implication for horticulture.

A nursery professional sees:

Zone 4.

Instant meaning.

A beginner sees:

Zone 4.

Perhaps meaning.

Perhaps not.

An expert sees:

Group 3 pruning.

Useful shortcut.

A beginner may see:

Apparently there is going to be a test later.

The information itself did not change.

The person processing it did.

This is why expert-designed communication can accidentally be poor consumer communication.

We naturally emphasize the things that are meaningful to us.

But we already possess the knowledge needed to interpret them.

The consumer may not.

The Curse of Knowing Too Much

There is a familiar problem in specialist industries.

Once something becomes obvious to us, it becomes difficult to remember what it felt like before it was obvious.

A horticultural professional may look at a tag containing:

Zone 5.

Full sun.

90 cm.

Blooms June to August.

and instantly construct a mental picture.

Suitable climate.

Sunny location.

Medium-height perennial.

Summer interest.

The consumer may see four disconnected facts.

This creates what we might call an interpretation gap.

The industry supplies specifications.

The customer needs meaning.

Closing that gap does not necessarily require eliminating technical information.

It requires translating important attributes into consequences.

Zone 3 becomes:

Built for cold Canadian winters.

Compact habit becomes:

Ideal for smaller gardens and containers.

Long flowering becomes:

Colour for much of the summer.

Repeat blooming becomes:

Flowers more than once.

The technical fact remains.

But now it answers:

Why should I care?

Features Are Not Benefits Until the Customer Connects Them

Marketing people have repeated the phrase “features versus benefits” for generations.

It survives because businesses continue forgetting it.

Horticulture has a particularly difficult version of the problem because our features are genuinely interesting.

Improved branching.

Compact internodes.

Higher bud count.

Superior genetics.

Disease resistance.

Enhanced hardiness.

Extended flowering.

Earlier maturity.

These things matter.

But they matter commercially only when the consumer can connect them to an outcome.

Improved branching might mean:

A fuller-looking plant in the garden.

Disease resistance might mean:

Less trouble maintaining attractive foliage.

Compact habit might mean:

Fits beside the patio without taking over.

The feature is horticultural.

The benefit is human.

Retail communication needs both.

There Is Another Question Hidden Behind “What Does This Mean?”

A customer picks up a tag.

“What does Zone 4 mean?”

It is tempting to answer literally.

Explain the USDA or Canadian hardiness-zone system.

Minimum winter temperatures.

Regional variation.

Microclimates.

Perfectly educational.

But perhaps the consumer’s real question is:

Will this live at my house?

Those are not identical questions.

The best answer may therefore begin with the decision:

“Yes, this is hardy for your area.”

Then, if useful:

“It is rated Zone 4.”

We have reversed the communication.

Outcome first.

Technical evidence second.

That structure is much closer to the way consumers naturally use information.

The Question Should Determine the Information

Imagine four customers looking at the same blueberry.

Customer One asks:

Will this survive winter?

Customer Two:

Can I grow this on my patio?

Customer Three:

Will I get fruit this year?

Customer Four:

Do I need another blueberry for pollination?

Same product.

Four different decisions.

Four different pieces of diagnostic information.

This explains why the fantasy of one perfect plant tag is difficult.

A static tag must serve many possible questions.

Digital tools provide an interesting opportunity here.

A QR code does not need to lead to another wall of information.

It could allow consumers to navigate by question.

Will it grow where I live?

Where should I plant it?

How large will it get?

When will it flower?

What do I need to do after I take it home?

Now the information architecture begins with consumer intent.

That is a more profound change than simply moving the catalogue online.

Search Is a Cost

Information has another economic characteristic.

It costs effort to find.

Suppose the answer the customer needs exists on the tag.

But it takes thirty seconds to locate.

Or they need to scan a QR code.

Scroll.

Open another page.

Find the care section.

Interpret a chart.

The answer exists.

But it is expensive.

Not financially.

Cognitively.

Economists and consumer researchers have long recognized information-search costs.

Consumers do not search indefinitely for the perfect answer.

At some point, the expected benefit of finding more information becomes smaller than the effort required to obtain it.

That is why retail communication should not merely contain answers.

Important answers should be cheap to find.

Control Can Improve Information Processing

Dan Ariely studied another intriguing question.

What happens when consumers are given control over the flow of product information?

His research found that allowing people to control information could improve their ability to match choices with their preferences and could increase knowledge, memory and confidence.

But there was a catch.

Giving consumers control also required mental resources. Under some conditions, the burden of controlling the information became detrimental.

That is almost a perfect description of the challenge facing modern horticultural websites.

We can give customers everything.

Filters.

Tabs.

Expandable sections.

Comparison tools.

Videos.

PDFs.

Plant databases.

Search.

QR codes.

But capability is not the same as usability.

The question is not:

How much can our website contain?

It is:

How quickly can the shopper obtain the answer relevant to the decision they are making?

The QR Code Is Not the Strategy

Horticulture has embraced QR codes.

Good.

They solve the physical limitation of the plant tag.

But a QR code is merely a door.

What matters is the room behind it.

If the customer scans a code and encounters:

a long generic product page

twelve paragraphs

six accordion menus

technical specifications

company history

breeder information

downloadable PDFs

another navigation menu

we have not necessarily reduced the information problem.

We have relocated it.

The opportunity is much more interesting.

Digital information can be layered.

At the first level:

What most people need to know.

Then:

Growing details.

Then:

Expert information.

Then perhaps:

Breeding and technical information.

The consumer controls depth.

The novice is not forced through the entire horticultural knowledge base.

The enthusiast is not prevented from accessing it.

That is good information architecture.

We Should Separate “Need to Know” From “Nice to Know”

Try this with any plant.

Take every piece of information available about it.

Now create three categories.

Need to know before buying

Useful after buying

Interesting if the customer wants more

You may be surprised how much information moves out of the first category.

Before purchase, perhaps the customer primarily needs:

What is it?

Why might I want it?

Will it work where I live?

Where can I use it?

How large will it become?

What is the one major thing I need to know?

After purchase:

How do I plant it?

How often should I water while establishing?

When do I prune?

How do I prepare it for winter?

For the enthusiast:

Breeding.

Patent.

Parentage.

Detailed habit.

Technical disease data.

Advanced pruning.

Production characteristics.

Nothing has been removed.

The information has been sequenced.

The Point of Information Is Not Information

This sounds absurd until you think about it.

The purpose of retail information is not to maximize the quantity of information delivered.

Its purpose is to improve a decision.

That means the success metric should not be:

Our tag contains 14 attributes.

Our website contains 450 plant pages.

Our QR database contains thousands of specifications.

Those may be tremendous assets.

But the commercial question is:

Did the information help the customer do something?

Choose a location.

Understand a benefit.

Reject an unsuitable plant.

Recognize a useful feature.

Use the plant properly.

Return for another purchase.

Information has value when it changes behaviour or improves outcomes.

Everything else is inventory.

Informational inventory, perhaps.

But inventory nonetheless.

Sometimes the Best Information Is a Warning

There is another side to diagnosticity.

Good retail communication should not exist solely to persuade.

Sometimes the most valuable information tells the customer not to buy.

Consider:

Not suitable for deep shade.

Needs a pollinating partner.

Not reliably hardy in your region.

Grows to three metres wide.

A retailer might fear losing the immediate transaction.

But preventing the wrong purchase can protect something larger.

The customer’s trust.

The product’s reputation.

Future purchasing.

A diagnostic information system helps consumers discriminate.

That means helping them recognize both:

This is right for me.

and:

This is not.

Great advice sometimes ends a sale.

Good retailing understands why that can still create value.

Information Should Become More Detailed as Interest Deepens

Think about how conversations work.

You do not meet someone and immediately tell them everything about yourself.

Information unfolds.

Retail communication can do the same.

From several feet away:

Hardy Canadian Rose

Closer:

Repeat flowering. Excellent disease resistance. Zone 3.

On the plant tag:

Height. Exposure. Bloom period. Care.

On the QR destination:

Detailed growing instructions, photographs, pruning advice, troubleshooting and technical information.

This is not primarily a visual-attention strategy.

It is an information-depth strategy.

The customer’s commitment determines how far they travel.

Someone casually interested needs the headline.

Someone evaluating the product needs decision information.

Someone who buys it may want education.

Someone obsessed with roses may happily read everything.

Give each person the depth appropriate to where they are.

Stop Answering Questions Nobody Asked Yet

Horticulture sometimes communicates as though omission is negligence.

If we know it, perhaps we should include it.

But communication requires editing.

Consider buying a bottle of wine.

Imagine the front label contained:

soil composition

harvest date

fermentation temperature

yeast strain

barrel origin

pH

residual sugar

bottling date

vineyard elevation

chemical analysis

All potentially legitimate information.

Most consumers would struggle to find the name of the wine.

Good communication does not disrespect expertise by editing it.

It respects the consumer.

The goal is not to hide knowledge.

It is to place knowledge where it becomes useful.

Information Can Even Weaken a Strong Benefit

This is where the dilution research becomes so interesting for plant marketers.

Meyvis and Janiszewski showed that when consumers evaluate whether a product will deliver a particular benefit, additional irrelevant information can weaken that belief.

Imagine a new rose whose compelling advantage is extraordinary disease resistance.

That is the story.

Now surround it with ten relatively ordinary attributes.

Height.

Pot size.

Colour.

Plant patent.

Container description.

Generic care statements.

Breeder logo.

Program logo.

Flower diameter.

Product code.

Again, none of this is necessarily wrong.

But the extraordinary fact is now sharing the stage with ordinary facts.

The consumer may leave remembering:

A rose.

Instead of:

The rose that stays remarkably clean.

Good marketing sometimes requires the courage to let one important fact dominate.

One Plant, One Reason to Care

There is a useful discipline here.

For every product, ask:

If the customer remembers only one thing, what should it be?

For one rose:

Exceptional disease resistance.

For another:

Remarkable fragrance.

For a clematis:

Extra-long flowering.

For a fruit plant:

Compact enough for a patio.

For a perennial:

Exceptionally hardy.

This does not mean pretending the plant has only one characteristic.

It means creating priority.

The human mind likes handles.

Give the product one.

Everything else can support it.

Retail Staff Need a Hierarchy Too

This principle applies equally to sales conversations.

A customer asks:

“Tell me about this rose.”

The knowledgeable employee could speak for fifteen minutes.

Instead:

“This is one of the most disease-resistant roses we carry.”

Pause.

Now the customer has a reason to continue.

If they ask:

“How big does it get?”

Answer.

“Is it fragrant?”

Answer.

The customer is controlling the depth.

This is very different from unloading every available characteristic at once.

Expertise is not demonstrated by how much information we can deliver.

Sometimes it is demonstrated by knowing which fact should come first.

The Information Audit

Garden retailers and plant suppliers could conduct a surprisingly useful exercise.

Take a plant tag, webpage or retail sign.

Circle every factual statement.

Then ask of each one:

• What consumer question does this answer?
• How important is that question to the purchase?
• Is this fact understandable without horticultural expertise?
• Does the customer need it now or later?
• Is it competing with something more important?
• Could the technical fact be translated into a clearer consumer consequence?
• If we removed it from this particular communication, would the customer’s decision become worse?

The objective is not minimalism for its own sake.

The objective is diagnosticity.

The highest-value information deserves the highest visibility.

More Knowledge Is Still Valuable

None of this is an argument against horticultural education.

Knowledge makes people better gardeners.

Better gardeners are more successful consumers.

Successful consumers return to the category.

Detailed information is an enormous asset.

The mistake is assuming that all available knowledge should be delivered at the same time.

There is a moment for:

the simple answer

the buying answer

the planting answer

the troubleshooting answer

the technical answer

The industry should provide all of them.

But not necessarily in one breath.

The Best Tag May Not Teach the Most

It may help the customer decide the best.

That is a different standard.

Imagine two plant tags.

Tag A contains eighteen facts.

Tag B contains eight.

Tag A is more comprehensive.

Tag B makes the three important differences immediately understandable.

Which is better?

There is no universal answer.

But retail communication should at least recognize the trade-off.

Completeness is an information objective.

Decision usefulness is a consumer objective.

Sometimes they align.

Sometimes they do not.

Horticulture Does Not Have an Information Shortage

We may have the opposite problem.

The industry has never possessed more knowledge.

Consumers have never had greater access to it.

A smartphone standing beside a garden-centre bench can access more horticultural information in thirty seconds than previous generations could find in an afternoon.

The competitive advantage is therefore changing.

It is no longer simply:

Who can provide information?

Almost everyone can.

The more valuable question may become:

Who can make the important information useful?

That requires judgment.

Editing.

Prioritization.

Translation.

Sequencing.

And an understanding of what the consumer is actually trying to decide.

The Question Behind the Question

Return to the customer holding the clematis.

They do not need to know everything.

Not yet.

They need an answer.

Will it cover the fence?

Will it survive?

Will it flower?

Will it fit?

Will it do what I want?

The horticultural industry possesses enough knowledge to answer all of those questions beautifully.

Our challenge is not generating more information.

It is recognizing which piece matters now.

Because sometimes the most sophisticated communication is not the communication containing the most facts.

It is the communication that knows which fact deserves to speak first.

Sources

An Information Processing Theory of Consumer Choice
James R. Bettman, 1979.

Ignoring Irrelevant Information: Situational Determinants of Consumer Learning
J. Wesley Hutchinson and Joseph W. Alba, 1991.

Effects of Word-of-Mouth and Product-Attribute Information on Persuasion: An Accessibility-Diagnosticity Perspective
Paul M. Herr, Frank R. Kardes and John Kim, 1991.

Controlling the Information Flow: Effects on Consumers’ Decision Making and Preferences
Dan Ariely, 2000.

Consumers’ Beliefs about Product Benefits: The Effect of Obviously Irrelevant Product Information
Tom Meyvis and Chris Janiszewski, 2002.

The Effects of Consumer Prior Knowledge and Processing Strategies on Judgments
Jiewen Hong and Brian Sternthal, 2010.

Product Information and Consumer Choice Confidence in Multi-Item Sales Promotions
Retail consumer-behaviour researchers, 2016.

Consumer Information Processing and Decision-Making: Origins, Findings, Applications, and Future Directions
Bernd Schmitt, 2024.