Just came across this comment in Kalle Lasn's book, Culture Jam, on one of the central issues facing Western consumerist cultures...
"When everything is at hand nothing is ever hard won, nothing ever satisfies. Without satisfaction, our lives become shallow and meaningless...we embrace the value of MORE to compensate for lives that seem somehow LESS...Plenitude feeds malaise as it fills the stomach."
Does make you think, when pretty much every client you talk to has choice and/or convenience in some form at the heart of their offer. But though this is what people may say they want in focus groups, and though it may make 'sense' given the 'pace of modern life', could it be that the very things which are theoretically satisfying are actually reinforcing deeper emotional dissatisfaction.
Rather than giving people 'everything' they could possibly want, and making their lives 'easier' in the process, maybe engineering in (or just allowing) some scarcity and inconvenience might have its benefits; not inconvenience in a 'bad service' sense, but more making people work a bit so that they end up feeling more satisfied (and more loyal) as a consequence.
