The Brain Sell: How the new mind sciences and the persuasion industry are reading our thoughts, influencing our emotions, and stimulating us to shop

Impulse purchases, reportedly worth around £24 billion annually to retailers in the US and UK, result from System I not System R thinking.

incoming information can reach the amygdala by what he calls a “low” or a “high” road.22 To translate this to the retail environment, when a shopper spots a familiar brand on the supermarket shelf, this information is initially sent to a part of the brain known as the sensory thalamus. From there it can either travel directly to the amygdala, produ

Which brain regions are of greatest interest to neuromarketers? The first is the amygdala (its name comes from the Greek for almond because of its shape), which processes incoming information, and the hippocampus (from the Greek for seahorse, again due to its shape), which is concerned with short-term memory. Both are located in the limbic system,

demonstrated not only that emotions are more important than thoughts in influencing shopping behavior, but also that emotions can be successfully engineered without consumers ever becoming consciously aware of how their minds are being manipulated.

automaticity of association

implicit memories are subconscious and cannot therefore be expressed in words. They can only be detected indirectly through their influence on our behavior. They are open to persuasion techniques operating below the level of conscious awareness, so-called subliminal messages,

One of the brain’s strengths is its capacity for making connections between objects, words, events, visual patterns, and different ideas. This involves the process of categorization.

“to categorize something is to render it

Red and yellowish green, together with bright and dark colors, increase stress and tension, producing negative emotions and a desire to leave the premises concerned.

Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (sometimes called S-quad or Squad) transmits sales pitches directly into the consumer’s brain, bypassing their ears.