Advertisement is used to sell everything from health care to automobiles to household products. There are many ways to advertise and many methods used to entice the American consumer to buy. Behavioral insight and advertising methods based in psychology are used to attract attention. Products and services sold in advertisements are not necessarily sold by the merit of the product but through psychological conditioning.
             Five major tactics to sell a product are "fear, fun and pleasure, and vanity and egotism" (Gresko, Kennedy, and Lesniak) and persuasion based on authority and three types of heuristics (Anderson, Grasso). Fear is utilized to "scare" a consumer into buying a product or using a service. Fun and pleasure lures a consumer into believing that an enjoyable association is with the product. Vanity and egotism play on the belief that a consumer sees themselves as something spectacular to sell a product. Persuasion based on authority uses a figure that is seen as knowledgeable about a product or the product is used in a situation in which it is used for a specific purpose for a specific person. Finally, heuristics is a mental shortcut used to make a decision.
             The American consumer is conditioned to recognize certain stimulus and pair it with products. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, did a famous experiment on conditioning. He was working with dogs and their salivary glands. When he gave the dogs meat, they obviously salivated, but when he or his assistant entered the room, they salivated as well. This is called classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (the meat), with a natural unconditioned response (salivation), is paired with a conditioned stimulus (Ivan or his assistant) and a conditioned response (salivation) (Nolan-Hoeksema). Products in advertisement are sold much the same way.
             "For example, a soft drink ad showed Pepsi and Coca Cola delivered to the wrong places...