【推荐1】Marketers assume the more choice they offer, the more likely customers will be able to find just the right thing. For instance, offering fifty styles of jeans instead of two increases the chances that shoppers will find a pair they really like. Nevertheless, research now shows when there is too much choice, consumers are less likely to buy anything at all, and if they do buy, they are less satisfied with their selection.

It all began with jam. In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper published a remarkable study. On one day, shoppers saw a display table with 24 varieties of jam. Those sampling the jam received a coupon for $1 off any jam. On another day, shoppers saw a similar table, but only six varieties of jam were on display. The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time for purchase came, people seeing the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people seeing the small one.

Other studies have confirmed this result that more choice is not always better. As the variety of snacks, soft drinks and beers offered at convenience stores increases, for instance, sales volume and customer satisfaction decrease. These results challenge our opinions about human nature and the determinants of well-being.

Choice is good for us, but its relationship to satisfaction appears to be more complicated than we assumed. What’s more, psychologists and business academics have largely ignored another outcome of choice: More of it requires increased time and effort and can lead to anxiety, regret, excessively high expectations and self-blame if the choice doesn’t work out.

Without doubt, having more options enables us, most of the time, to achieve better objective outcomes. Again, having fifty styles of jeans rather than two increases the likelihood that customers will find a pair that fits. But the subjective outcome may be that shoppers will feel dissatisfied, which creates a significant challenge for retailers and marketers. Choice can no longer be used to justify a marketing strategy. More isn’t always better, either for the customer or for the retailer.

【推荐2】By now, it is pretty well understood that we regularly pay for things in ways other than using money. Sometimes we pay sill with cash. But we also pay for things with data, and more often, with our time and attention. We effectively hand over access to our minds in exchange for something “fee”， like email, streaming video or online shopping pages. As opposed to “paying” attention, we actually “spend attention”， agreeing to the view ads in exchange for something we really want.

The centrality of that deal in our lives makes it unacceptable that there are companies who seize our time and attention for absolutely nothing in exchange, and indeed, without permission at all-otherwise known as “attention theft”.

Attention theft happens anywhere you find your time and attention taken without permission, like the new, targeted advertising screens in hospital waiting rooms, the airlines that play full-volume advertising from a screen right in front of your face, or the advertising - screens in office elevators. These are just few examples in what is a growing category. Combined, they threaten to make us live life in a screen-lined cocoon(茧)，shrunken and incapable of independent thought.

Then, what makes it “theft”?Advances in neuroscience over the last several decades make it clear that our brain’s resources are unconsciously triggered(触发)by sound and movement;therefore the screens seize rare mental resources. Meanwhile, in the law, theft is typically defined as the taking control of a resource “under such circumstances as to acquire the major part of its economic value or benefit. ” Given the established market value of time and attention, when taken without permission or compensation, it really is not much different from someone taking money out of your pocket. Thus, when the firms selling public-screen advertising to target audiences brag of rapid growth and billions in profit, those are actually earnings made by stealing from us.

【推荐1】Where he will play next is not yet official, but Lionel Messi put the only team he has laved for behind him Sunday，saying goodbye to Barcelona in a tearful news conference at Camp Nou stadium.

“My family and I were convinced we were going to stay here, at home,” Messi said via the BBC. “This is the end with this club, and now a new story will begin... Yes, it's one of the most difficult moments for me. I don't want to leave this club-it's a club I love, and this is a moment I didn't expect... It was like my blood ran cold.”

The moment bad been blooming since June 30. when Messi became a free agent, and fans lined the streets outside the stadium, with team members joining him for the news conference. A famous medium ESPN reported Sunday, from unnamed sources, that he had a two-year agreement to join another club. Paris Saint-Germain in France. On Sunday Messi called a ParisSaint-Germain move “a possibility” but added: “I have not agreed anything with anyone. I have got different clubs interested. Nothing is definitive, but clearly we are talking to them.”

Messi noted that he arrived in Barcelona 21 years ago coming to Spain from his native Argentina when he was 13 and making his first-team debut（首秀）a 17-vear-old in October 2004. He scored 672 goals in 778 games as Barcelona won 34 trophies. “I cannot be more proud of everything I did and lived in this city.”

He insisted that he had done all he could to stay, agreeing to a five-year deal that was half of his $170 million annual contract. But it all fell apart, and Barcelona president Joan Laporta said Friday that trying to keep Messi was a “risky” investment that would have hurt the club for 50 years.