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

The brain achieves this astonishing economy of energy by carrying out the vast majority of its operations via the automation of many thought processes in one of three main ways—all of which have significant implications for the way people shop.

Travis Carter and his colleagues at the University of Chicago decided to see whether a brief exposure to the American flag would have any effect on voting attitudes and intentions, even if no attention was drawn to that potent national symbol.

When going shopping as opposed to doing the shopping, we are buying far more than just products. We are also purchasing power and control.

Though price is just a number, it can evoke a complex set of emotions… Depending on context, the same price may be perceived as a bargain or a rip-off;

Smidts explained that neuromarketing’s purpose was to “better understand the customer and his or her response to marketing stimuli, by direct measurement of the processes in the brain,” and to increase “the effectiveness of marketing activities by studying the responses of the

What is important to understand is that want-needs are entirely created—not only by advertisers, marketers, and retailers, but also by public relations firms, internet bloggers, tweeters, and broadcast, print, and social media.

Customers always get more than they bargain for, because a product or service always comes with an experience. —Lou Carbone and Stephan H. Haeckel, “Engineering customer experiences”1

revolutionize the approach of the whole industry, was Kennedy’s three-word description of advertising: “Salesmanship in print.”

Even low-level wants and needs, those found in Box 1, can be transformed into want-needs through marketing and advertising.