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Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Pp.255. $25.00. ISBN 0-684-84913-5.
Paco Underhill was originally a student and colleague of William H. Whyte of The Organization Man fame. Underhill has taken the ideas and techniques developed by Whyte and his colleagues to study human behaviour in public spaces (urban anthropology) and applied them to the study of shopping behaviour, thereby creating the field of retail anthropology. In 1974 he founded Envirosell (see their interesting website at www.envirosell.com for more information), probably the foremost research company in this field. The goal of this approach to market research is to examine consumer shopping behaviour using a combination of in-store video recording, observation and customer intercept interviews. This data is analysed and amalgamated to provide insights into how shoppers behave in the store, how they react to the elements of store environments, including design, layout, signage, packaging, merchandising, etc. The patterns uncovered by this research give retailers and manufacturers valuable information about what happens at the point of purchase where so many buying decisions are actually made. Over the years, Underhill has worked for a variety of corporate clients, including many of the largest in the US, the UK, Europe and South America. Thus, he has a wealth of knowledge about shopping behaviour and a host of interesting anecdotes, many of which he shares in this readable and entertaining book.
The main theme of the book is that the point of purchase, the store environment, is a unique element in the total buying process. Much of traditional marketing and services research, which focuses on describing what consumers reveal in interviews or to examining scanner data that records aggregate purchases, is unaware of how this important aspect of the buying experience affects purchasing behaviour. While marketing managers devote vast sums to studying consumer demographics, lifestyles, and attitudes; and how consumers react to advertising, pricing strategies, and other parts of marketing strategies, apparently little attention is given to understanding what happens in the...