58 pages • 1 hour read
Paco UnderhillWhy We Buy: The Science of Shopping
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Science of Shopping
People have many differences—tall, short, young, old, male, female, slim, stout—but they share fundamental qualities that affect their shopping behavior. Retailers ignore these basics at their peril. Anatomically, humans are more similar than different. Most adults are between five and six feet tall, walk on two feet, have two hands, and use six senses, including eyes that can take in a great amount of detail but that are connected to brains that tire easily from too much information. If a store doesn’t respect these qualities, its sales will suffer.
For example, signs with too many words tend to be ignored because shoppers enter a store looking for merchandise and want simple and easy directions to those items, not fancy or complicated ones. Package designers, eager to provide as much information as possible about their products, often use very small print to cram all the facts onto the box, and such print is hard for older shoppers to read. Narrow aisles can discourage many patrons, especially in America, where customers tend to prefer a bit of distance as they shop. Young patrons are highly desired, and stores place products of interest to them within easy reach on middle shelves, while less popular items languish on bottom or top shelves, where older, shorter, and heavier customers must struggle to reach them.
Retail executives often try to save money by reducing staffing, but customers prefer speed, especially in the United States, and they spend more when clerks are available to offer assistance. When, instead, shoppers must search the store for an employee who can help them, their mood sours. Long lines at checkout also irritate patrons, while overworked, harried cashiers make a shopper’s final impression a bad one. Sales take a beating under these conditions; the retailer’s attempt to save on staffing leads to results that are penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Some aspects of shopper behavior are subtle, hard to notice without careful study, but powerfully useful to understand. One example is the universal human tendency to move toward the right, which dictates that store layouts should lead patrons in a counterclockwise direction, so that their visit gives them a good look at most of the merchandise. Major departments located to the left of a store’s entrance will draw patrons in the wrong direction, scrambling the visit and leaving much of the place unseen. Right-handedness also affects the way shoppers search shelves: They’ll look first at best-selling merchandise, then glance to the right, where smart store owners place items they want to promote. It’s a small detail, but it improves sales.
Retail stores that honor the time-honored tendencies of shoppers, and pay attention to small details that can make a big difference, will be rewarded with better sales and higher revenues.
The Power of Women
In most countries, women traditionally have done the bulk of shopping. Today, women juggle work and family life, but they still dominate the buying, and their preferences must be respected by retailers who want to stay in business.
Women take more time shopping than do men; they’re more methodical and pragmatic, comparing merchandise and looking for quality and low prices. Women often shop in small groups and enjoy offering each other advice about their purchases. Retailers do well to honor this proclivity, especially by providing plenty of staff to help find and explain products.
All shoppers, but especially women, want to touch and handle merchandise, stroking towels and hefting produce. Modern retailing reflects this desire by making merchandise easily graspable, on the “open sell” principle. Part of the pleasure of shopping is to use all the senses when testing merchandise: The input from vision, touch, hearing, sound, and sometimes even taste makes important contributions to shoppers’ decision making.
Women often bring children on shopping trips, and stores must avoid common mistakes when accommodating their kids. Many stores provide safe areas where children can play, which can relieve a busy mother. Sometimes, though, store aisles aren’t wide enough to make room for baby strollers, quickly discouraging family shoppers.
In the past, women would shop for cosmetics at department stores where beautifully coiffed and made-up sales ladies would give them a makeover and send them to checkout with bagsful of expensive foundation, blush, lipsticks, and eyeliners. Today, women have more freedom to try out cosmetics for themselves, but they still want alcoves for privacy, along with plenty of mirrors.
Things women don’t want are merchandise placed on bottom shelves, because they feel uncomfortable bending over to retrieve it. Often mismanaged as well are the restrooms and changing rooms, which often are dingy but instead should be clean, brightly lit, and inviting. Women sometimes bring their men with them to the store, and men quickly lose interest and look for somewhere to sit; store managers are wise to provide the men with TVs that air sporting events.
Men have, in recent decades, taken on more of the shopping duties, though they still exhibit behaviors different from women. Men tend to move quickly through stores, grabbing items they want without much pondering. They also are less concerned with price. When men bring their children along, the kids sometimes find they can get Dad to buy them more stuff than Mom would agree to. Stores pay close attention to this detail, especially at checkout, where men tend to be expansive about paying, and this means more impulse buys.
Whether the fading differences between men and women shoppers will flatten out completely in coming decades remains to be seen. Meanwhile, retailers must honor the wishes of their customers and provide for them, whatever shopping style they follow.
Retail Innovation in the Developing World
Some of the fire has gone out of marketing in the West, where many retailers seem to be resting on their laurels. Not so complacent are up-and-coming merchants in the developing world, where rising incomes make for a burgeoning middle class that wants its share of toys and luxuries as well as the basics.
In cities as far-flung as São Paulo and Durban, new retail experiences entice shoppers in ways not yet seen in the West. Brazil’s Daslu luxury emporium is a huge shopping mecca for newly wealthy locals and jet-setting world travelers. Members are greeted with a personal shopper who attends to their every need, and patrons find their clothing selections awaiting them in beautifully equipped changing rooms. Many services, including plastic surgery, are available, and the well-financed can purchase cars, boats, and houses.
Also in São Paulo is Iguatemi, a more middle-class shopping mall with a colorful design and energetic atmosphere that appeals to young single adults who mingle and meet up. It’s a locale that provides one-stop shopping for everything from watch-strap repair and dry cleaning to clothing stores and travel booking. Across the world in Dubai is the Mall of the Emirates, which features a ski slope. In South Africa, the Gateway Mall has its own sports area with a skateboard park and surfing wave machine.
Every country has a different culture, and merchants learn quickly how to cater to differing styles. Mexico’s shoppers like to shop in family groups, and stores stock products to appeal to their various ages and needs. In America, teens come to malls to socialize, while in Brazil, it’s the 20-somethings who do so. In Istanbul’s ancient Grand Bazaar, merchants cater to locals as well as the international trade, displaying a marketing sophistication that would put many Western retailers to shame, and they also do business on the Internet.
Most of the new malls are large, are colorfully designed, emphasize shopping as entertainment, and cater to people of all types and levels of income. These features portend a future in which shopping is highly social, worldly, and even exciting. Such innovations may help brick-and-mortar stores retain shoppers who might otherwise stay home and buy through e-commerce.
That said, people everywhere are fundamentally the same, and the basic principles of shopping science apply in Dublin as well as Detroit, in Durban as well as Dubai. While US malls are closing, in the developing world innovative shopping meccas have taken a lead in moving retailing toward the future.
