The Multiple-Choice Society.

There are many areas of life where people have more choice than ever before. The leisure industry bombards consumers with a flood of goods and services; the family and the Church have lost their dominant position in the structuring of people's lives; there are more choices in the way people spend their time each day; women and men are no longer locked into fixed role patterns; shopping can be done in the evenings and on Sundays, and ICT enables many people to work when and where they choose.
Have people's lives taken on the character of a never-ending succession of choices, like the rows of snack bars in shopping streets offering instant gratification for the first hunger pangs? This report subjects the increased freedom of choice in today's society to critical review. How much has really changed over recent decades in shop opening hours, in working hours and, more generally, in the way people use time? And what have been the consequences of this? For which population groups is this more the case, and for which less?
According to the authors of The multiple-choice society, there are limits to the increase in freedom of choice; it is limited by people's routines and by the social networks of which they form part. On the other hand, every supply creates its own demand, so that the multiple-choice society is at the same time a very demanding society.