Paco Underhill - Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping

For some of you, the book you hold in your hands may be an old friendgiven as a gift, bought in an airport, secured through Amazon or assigned at a school or training progam. Thanks for picking it up again. Most volumes stocked in the business section of a bookstore have a short shelf life. They zoom and crash and are forgotten within a year. This book has lasted ten years and is available in twenty-seven foreign editions. I had no idea when pen first went to paper back in 1997 that my story would appeal to so many readers.

From Russia to Japan, from Spain to Thailand, Ive had visits and e-mails from readers just wanting to say hi, many looking for a job and not a few telling me their own stories. University professors from China, a Marxist minister in the Bengali provincial government, a jewelry designer from Spainthe list goes on. My favorite pieces of correspondence came from a man who ran a septic tank cleaning business in Missouri. The letter was handwritten on lined paper. I dont know how many letters that man writes a year, but I know I was privileged to get one of them. Hed read the book and wanted my advice on what color to paint his truck.

In 2007, I reread Why We Buy and realized that parts of the story had progressed and that some of the examples Id used were dated. The book needed freshening and thats what its gotten. If you liked it the first time, youll like it even better the second. If youre picking it up for the first time, whether you love or hate shopping, this is a good, entertaining read, and youll never look at the world of shopping and consumption the same way again.

Paco Underhill
January 2009

I
INSTEAD OF SAMOA, STORES:
THE SCIENCE OF SHOPPING

II
WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN:
THE MECHANICS OF SHOPPING

III
MEN ARE FROM HOME DEPOT,
WOMEN ARE FROM BLOOMINGDALES:
THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF SHOPPING

IV
SEE ME, FEEL ME, TOUCH ME, BUY ME:
THE DYNAMICS OF SHOPPING

V SCREEN SAVERS, JET LAG AND WHIRLING DERVISHES:
THE CULTURE OF SHOPPING

O kay, stroll, stroll, stroll stop.

Shhh. Stay behind that potted palm. Get out your clipboard and pen.

Our subject is the fortyish woman in the tan trench coat and blue skirt. Shes in the bath section. Shes touching towels. Mark this downshes petting one, two, three, four of them so far. She just checked the price tag on one. Mark that down, too. Carefuldont get too closeyou dont want her to see you. She picked up two towels from the tabletop display and is leaving the section with them. Mark the time. Now, tail her into the aisle and on to her next stop.

Thus begins another day in the vineyards of science, specifically the science of shopping. But lets start by addressing a fundamental question: Since when does such a scholarly discipline even exist?

Well, if, say, anthropology had devoted a branch of itself to the study of shoppers in situ (a fancy Latin way of saying shoppers out shopping), interacting with retail environments (stores, but also banks and restaurants), the actual, physical premises, including but not limited to every rack, shelf, counter and table display of merchandise, every sign, banner, brochure, directional aid and computerized interactive informational fixture, the entrances and exits, the windows and walls, the elevators and escalators and stairs and ramps, the cashier lines and teller lines and counter lines and restroom lines, and every inch of every aislein short, every nook and cranny from the farthest reach of the parking lot to the deepest penetration of the store itself, if anthropology had already been studying all thatand not simply studying the store, of course, but what, exactly and preciselyscientificallyhuman beings do in it, where they go and dont go, and by what path they go there; what they see and fail to see, or read and decline to read; and how they deal with the objects they come upon, how they shop, you might saythe precise anatomical mechanics and behavioral psychology of how they pull a sweater from a rack to examine it, or read a box of heartburn pills or a fast-food restaurant menu, or grab a shopping basket, or react to the sight of a line at the ATMsagain, as I say, if anthropology had been paying attention, and not just paying attention but then collecting, collating, digesting, tabulating and cross-referencing every little bit of data, from the extremely broad (How many people enter this store on a typical Saturday morning, broken down by age, sex and size of shopper group?) to the extremely narrow (Do more male supermarket shoppers under thirty-five who read the nutritional information on the side panel of a cereal box actually buy the cereal compared to those who just look at the picture on the front?), well, then, we wouldnt have had to invent the science of shopping. In 1997, when this volume was originally written, the academic world knew more about the marketplace in Papua New Guinea than what happened at your local supermarket or shopping mall. Twentieth-century anthropology wasnt about what happened in your backyard.