Product Description
Is there a method to our madness when it comes to shopping? Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a Sherlock Holmes for retailers," author and research company CEO Paco Underhill answers with a definitive "yes" in this witty, eye-opening report on our ever-evolving consumer culture. Why We Buy is based on hard data gleaned from thousands of hours of field research -- in shopping malls, department stores, and supermarkets across America. With his team of sleuths tracking our every move, from sweater displays at the mall to the beverage cooler at the drugstore, Paco Underhill lays bare the struggle among merchants, marketers, and increasingly knowledgeable consumers for control. In his quest to discover what makes the contemporary consumer tick, Underhill explains the shopping phenomena that often go unnoticed by retailers and shoppers alike, including: How a well-placed shopping basket can turn a small purchase into a significant sale
What the "butt-brush factor" is and how it can make sales plummet
How working women have altered the way supermarkets are designed
How the "boomerang effect" makes product placement ever more challenging
What kinds of signage and packaging turn browsers into buyers For those in retailing and marketing, Why We Buy is a remarkably fresh guide, offering creative and insightful tips on how to adapt to the changing customer. For the general public, Why We Buy is a funny and sometimes disconcerting look at our favorite pastime.
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Amazon.com Review
In an effort to determine why people buy, Paco Underhill and his detailed-oriented band of retail researchers have camped out in stores over the course of 20 years, dedicating their lives to the "science of shopping." Armed with an array of video equipment, store maps, and customer-profile sheets, Underhill and his consulting firm, Envirosell, have observed over 900 aspects of interaction between shopper and store. They've discovered that men who take jeans into fitting rooms are more likely to buy than females (65 percent vs. 25 percent). They've learned how the "butt-brush factor" (bumped from behind, shoppers become irritated and move elsewhere) makes women avoid narrow aisles. They've quantified the importance of shopping baskets; contact between employees and shoppers; the "transition zone" (the area just inside the store's entrance); and "circulation patterns" (how shoppers move throughout a store). And they've explored the relationship between a customer's amenability and profitability, learning how good stores capitalize on a shopper's unspoken inclinations and desires. Underhill, whose clients include McDonald's, Starbucks, Estée Lauder, and Blockbuster, stocks Why We Buy with a wealth of retail insights, showing how men are beginning to shop like women, and how women have changed the way supermarkets are laid out. He also looks to the future, projecting massive retail opportunities with an aging baby-boom population and predicting how online retailing will affect shopping malls. This lighthearted look at shopping is highly recommended to anyone who buys or sells. --Rob McDonald
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 Applied common sense ( frizzle_mt )
This book is an exploration into the common sense of retail marketing. Underhill, an anthropologist turned marketing consultant, presents many of his observations concerning the arrangement of retail store displays and their effect on sales. He was the first to apply techniques from anthropology for studying spaces and how humans use them to retail stores to determine how space usage affects sales. He founded a company that collects such data and makes consequent recommendations to retail stores. Indeed, some of the book reads like a marketing brochure for his company, Envirosell. Nevertheless, general readers as well as store owners may find interesting points to ponder in the book.
The title of the book "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping" in itself is a bit of a marketing ploy. Such a title suggests "consumerism," and investigations of what makes people choose individual items or shop as a hobby, or how people go about the shopping task. Instead, the book addresses questions of store layout and physical product placement in stores, bringing to bear observational data that explain the impact of such choices regarding layout and placement on sales. For instance, Linklater points out the obvious yet so-often-overlooked fact that products must be placed within reach of the most likely customers. Thus, a layout with pants with short lengths on bottom shelves and long lengths on top shelves may generate more sales and fewer complaints than the reverse order, however more organized the reverse order may feel to the person doing layout in the stores. He notes the importance of finding out who the customers are before one tries to attempt such placement details, pointing out that, for instance, an observational study showed that dog treats are most often selected by children or elderly customers, so putting them in reach of specifically these customers may increase sales.
Although Underhill and his company emphasize observational research for making their recommendations, in this book, Underhill doesn't always provide the data to back up his claims. For instance, he argues that it was the growing interest of women in home repairs and do-it-yourself that led to the growth of hardware box stores and the decline of small hardware stores. That's an interesting hypothesis, but Underhill provides no observational data in this book to support such claims. It's hard to tell whether this was an editorial oversight or a glimpse at some personal opinions that may be coloring the interpretation of the data that was collected. Underhill includes a chapter on Internet marketing written before the topic got truly popular. Not surprisingly, in trying to predict the future, he completely missed one of the main factors that would come to affect Internet sales: reliability, and how having a reputation for reliable sales and customer service will far outweigh most other factors. Overall, the book makes some interesting points and may be worth reading for those involved in retail sales. However, it doesn't actually provide much information about "Why we buy".
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Great Insights
Nutshell review - This is a very interesting look into the psychology of why we buy (or not) by one of the original researchers into this field. A great book for the layman and will help you become more aware of the various ways in which we are being influenced to spend! A great read, well written and really fascinating.
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Good book ( kjanger )
I haven't finished reading this book, but have picked up some good ideas so far.
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An eye-opening read for this consumer ( krissiedahl )
I would think that most retailers could learn a huge amount about maximizing profits from this book. It was an eye-opening read for me. I am almost sorry that I am not a retailer so that I can't use this information. I wonder if the author has done any writing for professional journals. As others have noted, there isn't enough information on technique for anyone to really critique his methods. Still, though, that would be important mainly for an academician. The ideas themselves are what would be important to a retailer.
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 The Ultimate Guide to Understanding for Retailers Who Want to Better Understand In-Store Consumer Behavior ( davecarl55 )
From store layout and design to how and why your customers behave the way they do in your store, this book reveals a ton of information that you can use to increase your sales.
It also gives you advice on what changes you can make to help you make the buying experience easier and faster for your customers.
In my marketing consulting practice I concentrate on "guerrilla marketing" strategies that retailers can use to quickly, easily and inexpensively increase their sales and reading this book is one of the ways. I recommend it to all my clients.
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