"Bring me a one-armed economist," said Harry Truman.
"I am sick of asking an economist for advice and every single one of them saying 'Well, on the one hand...' ".
Source: Tom Peters

Re: The 'Secret of Happiness is'... post, below

Yes, more choice is making us miserable as consumers.

But, on the other hand...Malcolm Gladwell and others point to the fractionalization of markets as being a necessary part of the disintegration of the mass market, of allowing people to have their individual tastes catered for.

There is no perfect Pepsi, he says, just perfect Pepsis. Because different people want different things and have different tastes.

This blindingly obvious breakthrough accounts for all the different Cokes with lime twists, lemon twists and the gold one with no caffeine and no sugar that you can never find on the shelves and so you have to settle for the confusing new Coke One when you're not really sure how that's different from Diet Coke etc. etc. that you have to navigate through to find the one you want (or fail to if it's the gold one).

There may be a compelling logic in the horizontal extension strategy but more choice still makes life more difficult to manage. On a personal note, Sainsbury's needs to put more of that gold Coke on the shelves. I can never find it. The constant failure is ruining my trips to the supermarket. I feel like a hunter-gatherer who returns from the trip empty-handed...again. Erm, Schwartz is clearly right.