Funny you should use that "influence" word, and here's a supplement to TromboneAl's #7:
Amazon.com: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) (9780061241895): Robert B. Cialdini: Books
It's been going on for a lot longer than Buy-ology, and just because the technology is getting better is no cause for alarm from this arms race either. I'm still willing to take my chances as an informed consumer.
The best educational value of books like these is that you can apply your new skills to ask for more discounts. "C'mon, everybody's doing it, it's the way of the future, get on board now or get left behind when I take my business elsewhere!"
Nords, I think you have hit the nail on the head re: what scared me so much. It is that the technology is getting better. In the past, advertisers have used all sorts of methods they thought were attracting customers, but they really didn't know. They had to just throw mud at the wall, and hope a lot of it would stick. They didn't know beforehand what the customers were thinking or responding to, or what actually induced them to buy, because the customers really didn't know themselves. As a result, the data gathered in focus groups, marketing questionnaires and so on was not very accurate, and advertising campaigns or product introductions based on that data failed at least as often as they succeeded. Adding the neurological studies will give the advertisers the information they need to target their campaigns with pinpoint accuracy, or so it seems to me. What an unscrupulous manufacturer could do with accurate information on what induces people to buy their product is frightening. For example, in one of the early chapters of the book, the author describes how neurological studies revealed that the warning labels on cigarette packages (including the graphic photos of the health effects of tobacco required in some other countries) actually reinforce, not reduce, the desire to smoke. He paints the research as useful and beneficial, because its intention is to find out what anti-smoking regulations and so on are really producing the intended result. But what is to stop the tobacco companies from acting on the results of these studies to
promote smoking? Nothing whatsoever! And when I think of the use that could be made of similar studies in the political arena, I shiver in my shoes. Hitler came to power because he hit all the right nerves by accident or instinct. But what if someone as insane and evil as he was could know in advance exactly what to do to get people to vote for him?
The frightening thing to me is that this can all be done at the unconscious level. You won't see a neon sign blinking "Coke....Coke....Coke", but a building, or someone wearing clothes that are that particular shade of green that Coke bottles are (product placement with a vengeance!), and a little way down the street you'll get a whiff of some scent that has pleasant associations (carefully fostered by earlier exposure), or see something that evokes the shape of the bottle, and all of a sudden you'll be thinking "boy, I'd sure like a Coke", without ever knowing why. It is like Pavlov's dogs. They had no idea why they salivated when they heard the bell. Even if they had been human and known exactly what was being done and why, I don't know if they'd have been able to stop their mouths from watering, because the salivation started off as an involuntary response that was not under their conscious control. If I am not completely letting paranoia run away with me, neuromarketing will give advertisers Pavlov's ability to link purchase of their product to involuntary, unconscious responses. I don't see how being an informed consumer can protect against such manipulation. Being informed is at the conscious level, and neuromarketing bypasses that and goes straight for the subconscious.