You have just described literally all marketing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent
It is no coincidence that the inventor of public relations was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He wanted to call it simply "propaganda" but he decided that term's nazi connotations rendered it unsuitable.
I'm not a religious person, but in my view religious communities are some of the few that have been able to see and understand the deleterious effects of this "field of study".
To really understand Freud I think you probably need a comparably boundless supply of 19th century viennese cocaine.
I beg to differ. Those are all part of sex and death.
Without food I will wither away until I die. Without tasty food I will feel like I'm in a living death.
Money buys power (consumer power, or what have you) and with that grants you the possibility to expand your genetic profile, just like sex. And the desire to fit in is in the same realm as sex, because we want people to find us desirable so that we can potentially become a mate. I'm stretching and only using male-female desire here, but it's not a great leap to see how male-male desire (not sexual) is just a form of males wanting to become alpha- rather than beta-male to increase attractiveness.
If you work in a drab setting and hate it, get out more!
[1] http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/creativity/creati...
Though these days it's maybe more of a supplement to the Internet.
But the dream is of the metaphorical coffee shop, of course. You could work in a colourful bean-bag-chair-filled brick-and-beam, but still be miserable in your current role. Or you could come into a suburban corporate park and burst at the seams with energy.
The thing about a coffee shop is that it provides just enough noise to not be distracting. Plus it's much easier to tune out the sound of an espresso machine, people coming in and out, and the clatter of dishes than it is a co-worker on speaker phone two cubes over or someone standing behind you talking.
Sure, some people need complete silence and tranquility and work best in a closed door office, but many people can tune out and work well in a busy, noisy coffee shop.