In a recent article on www.reportonbusiness.com entitled Brand Surgery, Ken Hunt discusses the methods market researchers are using to define consumer's emotional attachment to a product.  Through a process that includes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers are delving in to "neuromarketing" in an effort to determine what actually makes us pull out our wallet.

He points out that often surveys are misleading in that they depend upon the respondent's honest answers.  And while individual's don't usually intend to misrepresent their opinions, they are in fact, coloring their responses due to any number of factors:  a need to impress or a fleeting mood, for example.  By using technology that measures involuntary physical reactions, researchers are able to obtain a truly unguarded emotional response.  

It's these emotional attachments to products or companies that every business covets.  Once in place, these relationships are very difficult to dislodge.  Consider your own attachment to certain products and how you will do without, rather than use another kind.  

Sounds a little scary doesn't it?  For those of you of a certain age, you might recall the brain washing scares of the sixties marketing scene in which subliminal messaging was the latest bogeyman.  

The point is that human behavior hasn't changed a bit in that humans are emotional beings who react emotionally to their surroundings.   It's the marketer's job to influence our behavior and opinions and it's the buyers job to beware.  Some things never change.