Are Sales People Becoming Mind Readers?

March 10, 2010 — -- Would you be wary oftechnology that might tell a sales clerk what you are most likely to buy, even if you think you haven't made up your own mind?

You would be a sucker for whatever the clerk is peddling because he or she might know more about what you want than you do yourself.

But what if the same technology could make you love to go on a diet, spend a few hours at the gym or do your homework?

Proving once again that there's no such thing as a free lunch, cutting-edge science is teaming up with commercial industries to literally peer inside the human brain and figure out how to make products that we will find more difficult to resist. It's an advertising executive's nirvana.

That may be a bit scary, but the same technology could lead to better products, because stuff could be tested even before it is built, and it could help make some distasteful chores more palatable by appealing directly to the brain's pleasure center.

This isn't science fiction. It's "neuromarketing," an embryonic field that could revolutionize consumerism. The brain scanners that have fascinated academic researchers for the past couple of decades are moving into the commercial sector as marketers learn how to literally read our minds.

Ale Smidts, professor of marketing research at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, coined the term in 2002, and it has caught on among industries ranging from auto manufacturers to soft drink producers. The field, which now includes several companies that specialize in neuromarketing, builds on work that has been a huge boon to medical and scientific research.

Scanners like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have allowed researchers to examine the inner workings of the brain. Blood rushes to areas of the brain that are activated by various stimuli, causing them to "light up" and thus reveal which parts of the brain are responsible for such things as memory, bodily functions, and yes, pleasure.

That has led some marketers to hope they can find a "buy button" somewhere in the human brain. Figure out how to punch that button and the sales will start rolling in. But that has been largely dismissed as hype by serious researchers. The brain probably does not have a buy button, but it certainly has a pleasure center, and therein lies the attraction.