Overwhelming options turn choice into consumer's enemy.(Viewpoint)(Column)

Advertising Age, August, 2004 by Bloom, Jonah

Byline: Jonah Bloom

Twenty-eight minutes. That's how long I stood in line at the concession stand in Regal Cinema's Battery Park 16-screen multiplex. Twenty-eight minutes of anger-managing, fist-clenching, curse-muttering frustration. Twenty-eight minutes of missing ads, trailers and opening movie scenes. Sure I should have quit and gone popcorn-less into the movie, saving myself six bucks, the stress and wedged corn in the teeth. But I am dogged by an inability to admit defeat in such situations-that and an addiction to butter.

You might also say I should have better anticipated the length of time required to get to the front of the line. But there were five registers open, and, when I picked up the gauntlet, no more than a dozen people in any of the...

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