The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet

Paco Underhill does a fantastic job at writing a compelling book about retail. His way of thinking is truly sensational and the writing style really makes you feel like you're in the store analyzing shoppers along with him.

The title suggests that the book discusses the psychology and science of shopping and consumerism. It doesn't. At best, it provides some practical advice to retailers on how to catch the customer's eye, where to position product displays, etc.

If you're looking for a book that actually digs into the psychology and science of consumerism, you might try "How Customers Think: Essential Insights Into the Mind of the Market" by Gerald Zaltman.

"Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond" by Paco Underhill is one of the most informative and entertaining business books that I have read recently. Almost every other page has some insight that makes you think: "that's interesting" or "that's good to know."

I'd recommend this book to anyone.

I bought the updated version because I thought the author may have some interesting research about online shopping behavior to share. However, the Chapter about Internet is really useless. Apparently, Mr. Underhill have no idea about how online shoppers can be studied.

Loved this book. He's the Malcom Gladwell of shopping behavior. There are so many applications that can apply to retail businesses and other business. You will never go into a store again without noticing what needs to be changed. His stories are great--I still can't believe that if you are bumped more than twice while looking at an item--you won't buy it. It's fun stories like that and more.

I loved the street smarts that Paco shares. He was a pioneer in a whole new way of looking at marketing. The principles that he sets forth are applicable to much more than retail marketing. Great instincts for the subject. You cannot read this book without learning something new. If you really understand retail marketing.you will be nodding so much in agreement that you will get a sore neck.

The best book on retail every written.....for years, I have made a good living doing retail consulting work. This is my go to source for many of my training sessions. Amazingly good insight - and if you're in retail, you have to read this.

Paco is a expert in shopping habits and his descriptions of effective product placements are detailed and emphatic. I used to believe that a stores product organization was randomized, however there is a fascinating process behind the set up.

This first half of this book has some logical and useful insight that can be applied to improve sales and attract customers by making adjustments to retail space. However, in the latter portion of the book the author lauds his own success and that of his consulting agency in the international arena, both topics that are less germane to the book's premise.

the author is defensive at best, and dismissive about the role of new technology...mobile/sensors...in how they will or won't affect retail consumer behavior...it could have been a 5 star book. He just comes across as a someone who stopped learning after the iphone was introduced.

This book is the definitive on retail sales. Each chapter is full of information that can be used in all retail settings to help you make your business the most it can be. So many of his tips seem like common sense yet they are easily overlooked in most businesses. Paco has made a science of studying the WAY people shop and his years of expertise can make a world of difference in the way you run your business.

On the plus side, this book had alot of fascinating observations about a whole field of study about which I previously didn't really know even existed, much less had given any thought to. In addition, next time I go shopping, I will probably stop and consider the extent to which some of the author's recommendations have (or have not) been implemented. On the other hand, the book seemed much too long to me, and rather than hoping it wouldn't end, I more or less had the opposite reaction: after awhile, I found myself skimming over quite a few paragraphs, because I felt that the interesting points could have been stated in a more concise way. Repetitiveness was a problem too. Finally, it seemed as if the majority of the author's recommendations could be summed up as: Give the shopper lots of elbow room (e.g. for strollers, to avoid the butt-brush effect, etc.), and put all of the merchandise within easy reach (no stooping for older people, no unneeded reaching for children, etc.). This sounds fine in theory, but it would seem that, in practice, the author is effectively suggesting that in order to accomplish the above two goals, all retailers should either (1) double the size of their leasehold space, or (2) reduce the amount of their inventory in half. I doubt that either of these options would be feasible for most retailers, and that the reason that some of them don't follow the author's recommendations to the letter is not because they are unaware of them, or even disagree with them, but simply because neither of the above solutions would be considered feasible.

It’s an excellent book though in a way hopelessly outdated. (I still recommend reading it :)) ) The book is outdated because though I wanted to learn about online shopping strategies, no such information in this book.

Relatively recently, I saw “Why We Buy” mentioned in an article; I immediately ordered the book from my local library. The book was depicted in the article, I got the same book. Red shopping bag on the cover (not red shopping bag with white diagonal filed stating “Updated edition (2008).” )

So, here was my frist surprise. The book I borrowed from the library was the 1999 edition. Did I mention it’s outdated?
There is the consolation that from what I read in the reviews, by now, the 2008 edition is outdated, too. If I want to cut it short the edition I read refers to the shopping experience as if the Internet did not exist. Today, the bottom line is - If you want to sell what I want to buy I’ll get it online.

Author Paco Underhill could not refer to that because in 1999 that concept was a guess at best. That being said, this book is fascinating. For a person like me, it’s a déjà vu experience what shopping at fabulous stores used to be like 20 years ago. Underhill describes in detail, how trackers (field researchers) researched the science of shopping – where products were presented best to help with th eflow of customers through the store how many customers buy a certain product at a certain time of the day, where shopping baskets should be located so shoppers will find them. I found it funny that Underhill explains the example of the shopping basket. Obviously, and this is proven with hard data, if shoppers grab a basket they’ll buy more stuff. He bemoans that stores very often put the baskets right next to the entrance, alongside the wall, where the hurried shopper, or the eager shopper, or determined shopper won’t see them. Well, almost twenty years later, I bemoan the same thing. Not one of the supermarkets where I shop has the basket put in a proper place where I will pass by, often I have to look for them, and frequently they are not immediately replaced when all have been taken.

A much more dated example is how teens used to prefer buying 45s (records) hence Underhill argues the 45s should be placed prominently not the 70’s which were more expensive. Does this matter in the days when I just read that an eight years used her mother’s the store account to order herself a truckload of toys?
Not to the customer because they’ll turn around and order from the store.

One of the best lines in the book is, “... Retailers are not opening stores in the United States to serve new markets anymore. They are opening stores to try to steal someone else’s customers. ..”

No truer sentence has been written about the shopping experience. I could go but for me the bottom line is – merchants and store owners need to read this book.

Chain stores should make it required reading. For instance, I like to shop at a certain clothing store (chain). I used to buy at their store in Wilmington, NC. That particular store featured a sofa and two comfy chairs for (tired) husbands, right next to the dressing room. Underhill could have invented the idea.

Whenever I shopped there, it was the same. Two or three husbands sat together in that corner, chatting about sports while their wives tried on clothes. The wives would come out of the dressing room and ask, “Honey, how’d like that?” The husband would look up and say, “Beautiful, honey”, the other men would nod approvingly, and then get back to their discussion. The store was always brimming with shoppers, everybody always happy. In a store from the same chain in Greenville, SC – No sofa! The store is half-empty, nobody buys dozens of dresses.
Obviously, even though the sofa takes up (valuable) space that could be used for clothes racks it helps selling. Underhill brings hundreds of these examples, including for appliances and cooking products.

Getting back to my original comment that I saw this specific edition (1999) mention in an article. Though at first I wondered why it became clear to me that in this complicated market, with online sales soaring, department store managers are encouraged to learn from Underhill, and - learn quickly.

5 stars
Gisela Hausmann, author & blogger

Pop quiz: what’s the best place on the supermarket shelf for an item you want to sell a lot of? Answer: just to the right of a well-known or popular item. The answer is simple, but it comes from a careful understanding of facts such as: it’s easier to grab something slightly to one side than directly in front of you; most people are right-handed; and most people will head for the products they know best.

This is one small example of the kind of shopper observance and study Paco Underhill has specialized in for decades, and which he summarizes in "Why We Buy." By exhaustively watching actual shoppers in actual stores (something a surprising number of business executives don’t pay attention to), Underhill and his company, Envirosell, discover how to make the shopping experience more conducive to, well, shopping. This applies to everything from signage (which must be visible and in a place where shoppers can read it) to seating (enough to allow people to rest so their trips can be longer) to shelf arrangement (products aimed at the elderly should not be located on the bottom shelf, where the target demographic has to bend or kneel down to get them).

In the book, Underhill explores the “science of shopping” from a variety of angles, including the influence of typical human anatomy and behavior on the design of stores and shelves, taking into account shoppers’ motivations, and catering to specific demographics such as men, women, children, and the aged. His insights, though in many ways common sense, are often striking. He speaks largely to the concerns of retailers, but out of a sense of sympathy for the customer, allowing him to escape the impression that he is promoting the manipulation of shoppers.

"Why We Buy" approaches a universal human activity from an intriguing angle, and contains a great deal of advice that entrepreneurs and businesspeople could put into practice immediately. Whether you’re a producer or consumer, a seller or a shopper, one thing’s for sure: after reading this book, you’ll never look a store the same way again.

~

Entertaining. Does not contain much science. Does not give facts or useful information.

The book often becomes an advertisement for his company. The author says things along the lines of: The way to solve this problem is to observe the customer, and watch hundreds of hours of videos, but you also need decades of experience to notice this kind of thing, and we're the only people with decades of experience. Which makes his methods useless (unless you hire him?). And as other reviewers have pointed out, he seems to be oddly ignorant about some aspects of marketing or business.

As far as "science" goes, the author's stance about scientists is to be condescending towards them, claiming that they aren't willing to put themselves out there and make specific predictions. Which is especially odd, since he also isn't willing to do that. For example, at the start of the section on signs, the author tells a story about being shown a sign in a conference room, and being asked what he thinks about the sign. He says he doesn't know, because he doesn't know what it will look like in every store, in every lighting situation, to every customer, in every mindset they are in, at every time of day, etc. That is the EXACT kind of thing that caused him to be arrogantly dismissive of scientists in the introduction. He says they aren't willing to put themselves "out there", though obviously most scientists publish their predictions publicly whereas his company gives their predictions privately to their client companies (and only mention them publicly long after the fact, possibly only if it makes them look good?). It's also really a weird stance to take, given that the book claims to be "THE science."

Again, it's entertaining, and a good set of anecdotes that can get you thinking about consumer behavior. If you buy it, take absolutely everything in it with a grain of salt, and assume that he's just telling stories. Don't rely on this for "facts" or "truths" that you can generalize to your company.

Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping was one of the first books I read on consumer behavior. Underhill’s witty anecdotes, supported by hard data, set a high bar. Topics range from optimal sign placement, to why we might go to stores in the first place, to how shopping is different for men than it is for women.

Underhill calls himself a Consumer Anthropologist. This is a label he uses to explain his approach to his research. As an anthropologist, the research in this book is not based on focus groups and surveys. Instead, Underhill and his company, observe people in real shopping environments. They film and cataloging the shoppers movements, actions, and behaviors in real-life. By deploying the tools and theories of anthropology, the author creates new insights and shares his findings with humor and clever writing.

Shop owners will no doubt find confirmation for many of the conclusions they have already intuited through casual interactions in their own stores. Why We Buy helps to put those observations in context of human psychology through the trained lens of an anthropologist. Even the most experienced retailers may be able to find some inspiration to rethink some of their retail executions.

Shoppers too can gain from reading this book. If nothing else, consumers will gain insight into the lengths retailers will go to to influence a shopper’s behavior. Why is it that you walked out of the store with something you had no intention to buy? The answer is in chapter 16, Magic Acts. Why does my wife love shopping except when she’s with me? Underhill covers this in chapter nine, What Women Want.
After reading this book I found myself thinking more about what was happening to me when I was in a store. Did turn right after I walked in because that is where I wanted to go, or is that where the retailer directed me? I am just following their plan? Optimizing a retail experience is only slightly removed from manipulating shoppers to extract profits.

Readers looking for concrete steps for retail store optimization may be disappointed. Underhill often tells the reader to take a particular action and also warns not to overdo it. Doing too much could, it seems, be as bad as not doing it at all. An example is the admonishment to not neatly arrange the merchandise. Neatness, as in a museum, can dissuade consumers from disturbing the product. But, he also shares the more obvious advice that the store shouldn’t be a mess. There is little guidance on how much neatness is too much neatness. The message seems to be: observe and adjust. And that message is the ultimate takeaway from Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. Merchants need to be keen observers of consumers and make adjustments to optimize profits.

For those needing help, the book also clarifies that Underhill’s consulting company is ready for hire. My only complaint of this otherwise entertaining book, is that at times, it slides into self-promotion.

I enjoy anthropological observation of alien civilizations, and it's also fun when those trained eyes are turned on the people in my own environment. The parts of this book that offer anecdotal views of shoppers are an easy read and I don't take them too seriously. But the title is misleading; the author's company, Envirosell, is not out to assist the consumer. He works for companies, mostly large ones, and his mission is to enable them to sell their products more efficiently. From the title, I thought I'd be getting some psychological insight into shopping, but that isn't the case. Instead, I got some insight into how stores do their best to sell, whether we want to buy or not. There's a certain overlap, of course, and I was able to note a few things of use to me as a shopper, but I lost interest in the book after a few chapters and struggled through the rest of it. Several reviewers have noted that this could have been condensed into a magazine article, and I'm inclined to agree. There are now many books on shopping that deal persuasively with our relationship to things and handling of money. This is not one of them.

Paco Underhill, founder of Envirosell, a research firm that specializes in improving retail environments to increase sales, wrote Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping to share his knowledge in the field and help businesses understand the psychology of a shopper. Although Underhill seems qualified to write this book, I believe he could have done a much better job. He is biased about much of the information and data that was collected through his own firm and his opinions that are the basis for the second half of the book.
My overall opinion of the book is that Underhill did a great job in the beginning but then stretched it out for too long and was extremely redundant. If you are starting a business or want to learn more about the science of observing shoppers then this book is good for you, but there are probably much better books out there. I expected to learn more about the reasons that we buy and our own psychology, but it was more about how we physically buy. dUn Underhill also went off about how businesses fail at advertising and Internet shopping which seemed off topic to the rest of the book. The book itself is organized well with different sections having different information, but as stated before the material is redundant.
The techniques that Underhill describes include interviews and observations to analyze every move a shopper does in the store from the minute they walk in to the minute they walk out. Underhill describes the four performance indicators, including the conversion rate, the time spend rate, the interception rate, and the more a customer waits, the less they buy. Prior to reading the book, I never thought about how much these actually affected my purchases. However, this information was interesting because it made me realize how significant of an impact these performance indicators have on consumerism. When I enter a Nordstrom, I am surrounded by friendly employees and service. Also, in a condensed amount of time, I am able to pay for my purchases at the many different, easily accessed cashier counters. Forever 21 on the other hand, I never receive customer service and the lines to check out are always long. Myself and many of my friends have realized how frustrated we are after leaving one of their stores, and it truly does affect the experience.
To go into further detail, some observations in the book that I found interesting are the ones which contrasted men and women. For example, men have more impulse buys and move quicker through stores, while women analyze their options and interact while they shop. This book also does a good job of including how the industry is changing. For example, more women are buying cars. Also, in 2025, around 1/5 of the American people will be 65 and older, meaning that we will need a larger print on most signs.
I personally would say that the weaknesses of this book outweighed the strengths and would give it a 2.5 out of 5. If you only read to approximately the first half, then it would be a 4 out of 5, but it just goes downhill from there. It is a very easy read, something that anyone entering high school would be able to understand, which makes it go very boring because you are reading the same material for pages and pages on end quickly. The authors style is informal, which I do believe works to engage the reader for this topic. I was hooked for the first half but slowly lost desire to continue reading after. I would only recommend this book to someone who is interested in entering the field of being one of these researchers or if you are want to learn information about how each person physically shops in a store because you have to design one.

In 1996 Malcolm Gladwell published an article in the "New Yorker" called the "Science of Shopping," and that made Paco Underhill, a market researcher who applied anthropological technique to revolutionize how the study of shopping, into an instant celebrity, prompting him to publish "Why We Buy" in 1999. In this ten-year "updated and revised" edition Mr. Underhill writes about how he revolutionized market research, the growth and triumph of his company Envirosell, and his thoughts about the brave new globally-connected world we live in today.

The first half of the book is written easily and assuredly by an expert so versed and knowledgeable about his craft. Mr. Underhill's researchers and their video cameras completely changed the way that retailers saw and understood their business. Instead of just looking at the cash receipts Mr. Underhill demonstrated to retailers how the store was an organic and dynamic place where individuals with different needs and desires came into the store. Why did they come into the store? Who did they came in with? What did they see when they first entered the store? How long did it take them to find and buy what they wanted? How long did it take them to purchase and wrap the item? Mr. Underhill minutely and meticulously analyzes the consumer's entire experience (even though it may be only a minute, the number of variables in play are immense), and offers useful insight to retailers that have been widely and religiously implemented today.

My favorite insight was how a retailer of home furnishings learned to deal with their male customers. Usually the men are bored and stressed and annoyed as their wives shop for china and dinnerware, but Mr. Underhill discovered that men like to converge to the glassware. At dinner parties, men are responsible for pouring the drinks, and so it's obvious that men would be interested in glassware, and at Mr. Underhill's suggestions, the retailer created a mini-bar for the men to play with.

Unfortunately, insights are only insights if they're not known, and the book is a victim of its own success. Today retailers are so good at identifying and anticipating the thinking and behavior of consumers, and have implemented it so throughly into their retail outlets that Mr. Underhill's insights are now obvious. Mr. Underhill tries to update his book by discussing global retail shopping and the Internet, but he's clearly not as well-versed in these areas, and the last half of the book comes across as redundant and pointless.

Still, Mr. Underhill did create the science of shopping, and his words and works will continue to live on in marketing classes. Another small consolation is that he did grew insanely rich because of his research and insights.

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".

Confession: my first contact with Envirosell was to discuss viability of applying defense tracking "technology looking for a problem" to retail environments. Underhill dismissed this entire practice as glibly on page 56 as his staff dismissed my meeting request. I've since read his book for a more nuanced understanding of his perspective.

Underhill rightly criticizes business schools (US in particular). "Among the many pieces missing from an MBA education is an understanding of the fundamentals of the packaging and that affects the brand " (pg 84).

The book is compelling because of its memorably humorous case studies. What is "butt brush" is and how does it impact your bottom line? (no pun intended) How can you discern the gender of a store manager in one glance? He draws from clients in diverse industries and geographies to serve us universal guidelines we can test in our own businesses. Despite a background in architecture and urban planning, most of the suggestions he makes are not big budget redesigns, but tactical tweaks you could begin implementing in less than 24 hours. Even for casual shoppers, this book will make you savvier about the tactics retailers use to decrease your abandon rate as well as giving you tools to be a more perceptive people watcher.

There are just two improvements standing between this book and a full five star rating.

* Match Expository Structure to Audience. This book reads like an Envirosell business development travelogue. As mentioned by a prior reviewer, the "Come Fly With Me" chapter covering Envirosell's international expansion detracts from the flow and would work better as an introduction or postscript. This book should function more like triage in an ER. It should calmly identify quick experiments, benchmark data, and organizational priming that a patient could process while waiting for the Envirosell surgeons to help with more intractable challenges. The material is there, but too scattered to hang together as a coherent how-to guide.

* Soften Luddite Stance on Technology. Underhill's heart is in the right place; we've all felt that "top level executives [crunch] numbers but never even once [bother] to visit the actual floor" (pg 275). He's even added a few additional chapters about eCommerce and technology to this version as a concession to his the store reviewers. Yet one can't ignore the potential for technology to nurture a culture that embraces the observation and experimentation he applauds. For instance, Underhill mentions, "Without conversion rates, you can't tell whether you're Mickey Mantle or Mickey Mouse." (pg 31) Fair. However, his current methods of observation limit him to measuring store conversion rates at the per visit level while wistfully speculating about the potential of calculating customer's value based on their in-store and online activity (pg 245).

I bought this out of interest in the psychology that prompts people to buy things—primarily online. On that score, the book was pretty disappointing. As other reviewers have pointed out, it’s more about the science of selling—and not even that so much as just shedding light on shoddy merchandise presentation. And the (single) chapter on e-selling is pretty much a blow-off.

That said, what *is* here is fascinating, humorous, and highly entertaining. Underhill shares anecdotes from a lifetime of studying shopping spaces and how people use them. If I was a retailer in a physical store, I would have walked away with all kind of treasures. As it is, I still enjoyed the read.

The thesis behind this book is that by making the process of shopping easier and more desirable, and the choices clearer, the consumer will buy more. That's very similar to the observation that Taylor made about manual labor. Make it simpler and easier, and more work will get done. The methods are remarkably similar. Measuring the actions that the person under study makes, and changing the environment and process to see how the productivity is affected. I think this work is an important extension of behavioral economics, and hope it will be applied to more areas of business.
Although a book like this could be written in a very technical way, the voice and perspective are quite approachable. Also, the book is written to be equally interesting to shoppers and retailers. I'm sure you notice a lot of new things about your own behavior and that of others the next time you go shopping.
I also thought that the book was a good example of the way that stalled thinking holds back progress. For example, without this kind of observational measurement of shoppers, most retailers would never know which shoppers leave without buying and why. Or, why some merchandising experiments succeed or fail. In both cases, there are opportunities to accomplish more, if you can only grasp how your own decisions and behavior are helping and hurting your sales.
One of the sections I enjoyed was an evaluation of why many book stores miss sales. I often notice the inconveniences mentioned when I am in a book store, and wondered why the stores persist in doing things that make the store hard to shop in. There's a lot of stalled thinking in the industry, which is why we are fortunate to have the store.com to help us.
The book does a nice job of discussing how people with different perspectives shop differently. You'll probably get a laugh or two when you find yourself there. Do you secretly dig a sample out of the lipstick or the men's deodorant gel? Do you browse and rarely buy in Laura Ashley or in a computer store? When do you look at yourself in the mirror in a store? When do you not even go into a store because you can see long check out lines?
Ultimately, almost everything in this interesting book is common sense. But chances are that your needs are not often well served in areas that are important to you in retail outlets. My favorite was the problem of people only having two hands, and all of the times that we need three or four to negotiate the retailer's set-up.
A particular strength of this book was that it also pointed out that behavior is subject to change, as social patterns and values change. Men's jeans need to be in areas of wide aisles or fathers pushing their children in strollers will have to choose between looking at jeans and abandoning their children. That was not a very important problem 50 years ago.
I have often noticed how much people like to sample things before buying them, and how difficult it is to sample in many situations. Do you really want to go through what it takes to take a test drive of 20 different cars in 20 different dealers? Probably not. Yet, I would certainly buy a car more often if I had an easier chance to try the new ones out. You are probably the same way.
The main weakness of the book is that much less work has been done in looking at consumer behavior on the Internet, so the findings will hardly surprise you. You probably noticed these things years ago, like sites that are hard to navigate, have no site maps, and won't let you use the forms to buy.
I encourage anyone who has an interest in being more customer oriented to read this book, and use it to reexamine what your customers have to go through to do business with you. How could you improve?
Eliminate your stalls that make buying from you difficult, and rapid profitable growth should quickly follow.

WHY WE BUY should be required reading for anyone enrolled in Marketing 101, and recommended reading for anyone who has disposable income. Author Paco Underhill, the founder of a research and consulting firm that advises businesses on how to boost sales, has written an engaging revelation on the ways vendors can design their merchandising operations and locations to better relieve you of your fluid assets. (It's not quite as cynical as I've made it sound, because, after all, shoppers are willing participants in the retail dance. We all like to acquire Stuff.)
Underhill covers a lot of ground, most of which shoppers rarely notice or consider: the placement of signage, the width of shopping aisles, the height of shelving, the importance of having two hands free, the shopping habits of men vs. those of women, the influence of kids, the critical importance of the five senses in evaluating goods, buying habits of the youthful vs. the aged, the point size of type on packaging, traffic flow patterns within stores, the location of the cash/wrap stations, the placement of promotional materials, the advantages/disadvantages of Web selling, and more.
The subject matter could've made Underhill's narrative, however informative, also as dry as peanut butter-covered graham crackers without milk. Happily, the author exhibits a wry sense of humor that makes WHY WE BUY worthy of casual reading. Two examples follow to give you the flavor of it.
When discussing the reinvention of certain household products so as to appeal to men: "The manliest monikers used to go on cars; now they go on suds. A very successful soap introduction in the `90s wasn't anything frilly or lavender. It was Lever 2000, a name that would also sound right on a computer or a new line of power tools. I'd drive a Lever 2000 any day."
Regarding the absence of seating for the use of menfolk while their ladies shop in a certain apparel store, and the male solution: " ... they gravitated toward a large window that had a broad sill at roughly the height where a bench would be. And where exactly was this ad hoc bench? ... It was immediately adjacent to a large and attractive display of the Wonderbra ... On the day we visited the store, there were two elderly gents loitering there, unabashedly discussing the need for Wonderbras of every woman who was brave enough to stop and shop. Did I mention that few Wonderbras were purchased there that day?"
I doubt if having read this book will raise my awareness of the subtle stratagems by which retailers hope to have the opportunity to swipe my plastic, but it was worth a chuckle nevertheless.

This book explores the psychology, sociology, and ergonomics of shopping and retail display in depth. During the first several chapters of this book I was fascinated by some of the facts and anecdotal stories that the author presented. This fascination lasted for about half the book however. As the book progresses the author drifts from his presentation of the science of shopping to his endless, but often unsupported, suggestions on how shipping can be improved.
The early chapters contain more descriptions of actual studies on shopping that Underhill's consulting firm has done. Whether you're a casual shopper or the owner of a retail store, these chapters are loaded with useful information. The author explains how simple changes to product display or packaging can make dramatics changes in the volume of product purchased. In the later chapters, it almost seems as though the author has run out of material. Instead of describing actual case studies, the author goes on a length with his personal opinions on how shopping could be improved today and how it will change in the future.
Some of his suggestion seemed pretty wild. Designer toilet paper?? Other suggestions he makes just don't seem to be reasonable to me as a consumer. Example: He suggests that computer stores don't put all of the software, printers, monitors, etc in separate sections but rather disperse them throughout the store. I don't know about Mr. Underhill, but when I go out to buy a monitor or printer, I want to see them all side-by-side so I can compare them. I don't want to run around the store trying to find them all. He has countless similar suggestions that seem dubious to me and are not backed up by any of his research.
His predictions for the future also seem rather odd. Example: As baby boomers age we'll see companies like Harley Davidson making sporty wheelchairs so upscale boomers can transition from their Harley cycles to their Harley wheelchairs.
It is clear that the author is not thrilled about online shopping. Although some of his suggestion for how to change it indicates that he has not had much experience with it. He recommends that sites do things that they are actually doing today. Example: Why can't we order groceries online? - You can in most major cities Mr. Underhill.
If you're in the retail business, you can probably learn a lot from this book despite the negatives I mentioned. I'd recommend it for anyone in this line of business. If you're just looking for an interesting book about shopping, I think that you too will have mixed feelings. It starts out interesting, but soon becomes tedious to read.
This a review of the unabridged Audible.com version of this book (downloadable audio). This is an excellent audio version and the reader was one of the best I`ve heard.

From start to finish, Why We Buy is very interesting read. Underhill goes over the behaviors people exhibit while they are shopping and points out how retailers do things both correctly and incorrectly. His conclusions are based on years of observational research.
The book is written in a light, conversational manner that makes it a quick, easy read. However, it excludes an enormous amount of detail about Underhill's research. The book makes references to his research over the years, but does it at such a high level that it is difficult to fully buy into his argument. I want to believe what he says, but he just doesn't provide the necessary level of detail.
He also seems to draw conclusions that just can't be made (based on the information he presents). For example, he will relate a story of how a particular rack was being used in a store and then say "obviously it should have been placed like this.. and after the store took my recommendation the items on the rack sold much better...". He doesn't account for other factors that could have caused better performance -- such as seasonal effects, etc. One could assume he controlled for all of these things, but it isn't stated in his discussion.
Also, he tends to go on rants about the way stores should be and offers all kinds of suggestions about his view of the world. Great.. amusing at first, but they get a little tiring.
Finally, I don't agree with his assessment of online shopping (note, I am biased on this one). He takes his observations about shopping and applies them to the online environment when it isn't clear this is a reasonable thing to do. Some of his points are good, but in general they are very near sighted.
All criticism aside, I think Why We Buy is a worthwhile read. Just set your "suspension of disbelief" threshold higher while you are reading it.

Paco Underhill studies shoppers in the retail environment the same way an anthropologist studies a culture--through painstaking observation and rigorous analysis. His company, Envirosell, advises retailers how to improve their performance by improving the design and layout of their stores to make them more attractive, more effective, and easier to shop. I can guarantee that you will never look at a retail store the same way again after you read "Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping."

In this book, he lays out some of the insights that Envirosell has identified for his clients over the years. Some of these ideas may seem obvious at first, until one realizes that they were not obvious at one time--and especially not to their clients. Envirosell's genius lies in putting quantifiable data to their recommendations, and then tracking the results of those recommendations to prove the ROI. This book was first published in 1999, so some of the ideas may seem to be common practice by now, while others are still not being fully implemented. Thus, this book is worth reading for anyone who operates a retail store of any kind.

My own experience is that excelling at retail is similar to being a good host for your guests--be attentive to their needs, considerate of their feelings, aware of their restrictions, and grateful for their business.

This is a book both McDonalds and Ralph Nader would love. In this book, Underhill suggests different methods to maximize retail sales. Some include, for example, common sense solutions such as raising or lowering products so as to fall within the person's view range. Others are based on his research, such as putting a product you're pushing to the right of the best-seller. Many people will gravitate to the desired product (think of it as the magician's trick of "forcing" a card).
The book further discusses the different age groups, family configurations, and genders, and how they shop, maximizing the efficacy of signage and packaging, etc. It has many hints to increase sales over short and long periods of time.
It also advocates making stores more family-friendly. As a parent that has failed to successfully negotiate the Gap Kids' fixtures with a stroller and thus decided not to shop there again, I heartily agree with Underhill's suggestions.
Consumers should also read this book to understand the insiduous (and fascinating) means retailers are using to manipulate them into further purchases. We all know how playing Christmas music is supposed to get you in the mood to buy more. This book details different subtle ways in which retailers are modifying their stores to entice you to buy. My favorite: placing a hopscotch game on the cereal aisle, forcing parents to slow down and become more vulnerable to kids' requests for the latest Sugar Bombs. If you feel that retailers are the enemy, this book will provide further proof.