Tricking the Brain with Neuromarketing... New Age Marketing, or Marketing 101?

Morning Edition on NPR ran a story this morning about a recent study that was conducted wherein the researchers were trying to see how cognitive decision making could be influenced by outside stimulus. They had their test subjects memorize numbers on little slips of paper in Room A. Some participants had 2-digit numbers to memorize, others 7 and a mix in between.

The participants were then asked to go to another room, Room B, and recite the number they had been trying to remember. However (and this is a major part of the study), the researchers stopped the subjects in the hallway and asked them if they would like some healthy fruit or some delicious cake as a sort of "thank you" for participating. I'll let Jonah Lehrer, who writes about this study in his book, [i]How We Decide[/i], explain:

[i]"Here's where the results get weird. The students with seven digits to remember were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake as students given two digits. The reason, according to Professor Shiv, is that those extra numbers took up valuable space in the brain -- they were a "cognitive load" -- making it that much harder to resist a decadent dessert. In other words, willpower is so weak, and the prefrontal cortex is so overtaxed, that all it takes is five extra bits of information before the brain starts to give in to temptation."[/i]
So what?
So...I believe this sort of targeted marketing is already happening, with marketers way ahead of the scientific community. Take for example your commute in the morning: You haven't eaten breakfast, you've got your entire day ahead of you on your mind, and you're listening to the radio. Many food ads entice you with the idea of entitlement. "Don't you deserve a break?" it might ask. With so much on your mind, and your stomach growling, it's not a stretch to see, in the next moment, yourself in a drive-thru lane.

So, what does this mean to the marketing community? Obviously, buzzwords like "impulse purchases" come to mind immediately, but is it really fair to target the impulses of individuals who have an inordinate amount issues to deal with? When a company has real power over the decision processes of the brain, it might be time to step back and ask ourselves if we're trying to [i]sell[/i] things to people or trying to trick people into buying stuff they otherwise don't want. Marketing is about selling after all, but perhaps not at the expense of our ethical credibility.