Malcolm Gladwell - Happiness and Choice

Malcolm Gladwell discusses how Howard Moswcowitz(?) changed the food industry in North America, essentially by rigorously surveying Americans on spaghetti sauce. He worked with the Campbell's Soup kitchen to develop a variety of new sauces and asked people to rate them. He discovered an existing and ignored market for 'chunky' sauce, which Prego, who had contracted his services, promptly moved into this market.

According to Gladwell, Moscowitz's work started the revolution in food culture which has given us sixty-thousand kinds of boutique olive oil. For Gladwell, this explosion in consumer choice must lead to an explosion in happiness - our previously ignored 'needs' are being serviced. I'm not at all sure that my designer olive oil has made me happier, or that my 'need' for it wasn't manufactured by its existence, but... ;-)

Incidentally, Gladwell is the writer of The Tipping Point (which caused a sensation in the business world for it's promises about increasing the power of advertising) and Blink.