Why We Buy
We Americans love to buy stuff, even if it means refinancing our mortgages and dipping into reserves that don't exist to do it. We love it soooo much, we've effectively bought ourselves a recession. But why? Well, when we're at home, we're more likely than not to lounge around taking in messages that teach us how fun, sexy, original and hilarious it is to consume things. And, when we step outside of our homes, we do our best to emulate that life, and we enter a retail world that does its best to satisfy our desires—to feel sexy, funny, original. It's why I bought that novelty tee shirt last week that lets everyone know that "It's not a bald spot, it's a solar panel for a sex machine." Funny, sexy and original... right?
That retail world is not of hastily construed design, though. How we shop—how we mentally and physically interact with the retail environment—has been meticulously researched and become more of a science than art, and the guru of retail science is Paco Underhill. His classic, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, is survival literature for any retailer, and an eye-opener for any consumer. Underhill posed a simple question, "[What if] anthropology had devoted a branch of itself to the study of shoppers?" and he decided to answer it. He sent a research army out into the field to follow consumers around, closely (and secretly) observing their behavior in the laboratory of the real-world.
"Why not take the tools of the urban anthropologist and use them to study how people interact with the retail environment?"
Why We Buy, Page 24
If that sounds invasive to you, consider that, as Underhill puts it, "In 1997, when this volume was originally written, the academic world knew more about the marketplace in Papua New Guinea that what happened at your local supermarket or shopping mall. Twentieth-century anthropology wasn't about what happened in your backyard." Paco simply decided to use readily available methods of research to turn the anthropological lens around, to study the intricacies of us. And, in so doing, he produced a book that quickly became a national bestseller and translated into 27 different languages (and, now, the rest of the world can marvel at our odd, foreign behaviors). The book was updated late last year to take into account the changes that have occurred over the last decade due to the internet and the "global consumer," but the research that has always been the heart of the book is what is most useful to the average retailer—and curious observer. Maybe, armed with this knowledge, we can become not only better retailers, but better consumers as well.
The former proprietor of Dirty Jack's Record Rack, a lifelong merchant himself, gives you his take on the book below.
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