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Episode details

World Service,19 Jan 2011,18 mins

The tyranny of choice

Business Daily

Available for over a year

Justin Rowlatt is on a farm, with an unusual mission - to explore the "tyranny of choice". As consumers are offered ever more choices it can become increasingly difficult for them actually to choose. Business Daily illustrates that paradox with an ancient and unusual experiment on a donkey. We'll also be hearing how consumer choice is changing the way people live in Kenya. And with a world of choices on offer can you ever make the right decision? Justin speaks to Barry Schwartz a professor of psychology at Swathmore College in Pennsylvania and Jonah Berger, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Plus our regular commentator Peter York, explains how one advertising sector is still stuck in the bad old ways.

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