There is a psychological study in which customers in a supermarket were faced with six selections of jams. Sales were decent. The next day, the selection was expanded to 24 types of jam and, counterintuitively, sales dropped. Why?

In this scenario, customers became overwhelmed by choice and preferred a more limited array of options. Elements of this sensation struck me while on the floor at the Citywire Global New Ideas event in Copenhagen.

The purpose of the event, which I hosted, is to showcase innovative or differentiated investment strategies designed to help European fund buyers navigate struggling asset classes, rising rates, rampant inflation and political headwinds.

I wouldn’t want to suggest delegates left worse off than when they arrived – after all, the title of the psychological study was ‘When choice is demotivating’.

Although many had a clear idea of their focus, a handful of those I spoke to gave the impression of having gone shopping without a shopping list. Or having a handful of items in mind but suddenly being overwhelmed by the rows and rows of potential products.

As one selector told me: ‘All the ideas I have seen here are good and workable, but I can’t select them all. And the correct combination, which I am paid to work out, has become more and more elusive.’

Getting under the skin of what their clients – indeed their firms – really want would be one response to this.

In a bid to narrow the sights, Citywire canvassed the 70 delegates, drawn from all corners of Europe, about what they wanted new products to actually do.

In total, 47% of those said any new idea, regardless of how leftfield it may be, must fit their existing investment framework. The priority of a product, said selectors, is to produce returns (35%) or offer something fresh (35%), which was ahead of protecting capital (15%) or simply offer a spin on an old idea (15%).

What can asset managers do better?

Selectors appear somewhat numb to constant product pushing, but also open to listening to things they might not have considered. Does that sound contradictory? It is!

The challenge – essentially the Holy Grail – is to deliver exactly what investors need when they don’t know they need it. This would be akin to Steve Jobs’ ‘iPad moment’, where he noticed a bizarre gap between phones and laptops that nobody knew they would want.

But funds with clear, understandable constructions are proving popular. That was the view on the ground in Copenhagen, at least.

Another selector told me that essentially all funds are moving towards being thematic: something that sits in the sweet spot between the broadest possible brushstrokes and subsector minutiae.

Selectors I spoke to were keen to break from the herd in allocation terms, but not sever ties completely. The focus is on finding a strategy that complements ideas and compels investors without pushing too deep into the unknown.

There have been elements of awareness on the provider side in recent weeks.

Lazard Asset Management handed its experienced thematics team an (unsurprisingly) thematically-minded strategy, with the remit of investing in stocks to ride out rising inflation.

This is not an endorsement, but an example of how focused simplicity could sell.

A selector I spoke to before the Copenhagen event lamented ‘fund name bingo’, where any and all current themes are stuffed into a fund’s title to appear in the widest array of fund searches.

With selectors in something of a jam of their own at the moment, asset managers able to meet their needs in terms of simple-yet-effective funds will be well placed to help asset allocators avoid sticky situations as we near the end of the year.