There is a thing which of course Freud called the narcissism of small differences. There must be a little bit of that going on with oat milk and other forms of lactose free dairy. That the extent of making stipulations serves to suggest you're highly sophisticated. But it's worth remembering that we still cope making those choices. Even though I think someone calculated that the number of variants you could order at a Starbucks is more than 80,000.
Author and Advertising Executive Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy talks about his book Alchemy with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Sutherland makes the case for the magic (yes, magic!) of advertising and branding in helping markets work well. This is a wide-ranging conversation on consumer choice, public policy, travel, real estate, and corporate decision-making using insights from behavioral economics and decades of experience in the world of advertising.