num_pages: 256
description: "Why We Buy" reports on evolving shopping culture. It's a book about us, from moms &amp; dads to seniors &amp; kids, what we do &amp; don't do in restaurants, showrooms &amp; stores. It's about the struggle among merchants, marketers &amp; increasingly knowledgeable customers for control. With insight, anecdote &amp; data, retail anthropologist Underhill leads a journey into shopping heaven &amp; hell. For those in retailing &amp; marketing, "Why We Buy" is a remarkably fresh guide, offering concrete &amp; usable advice on how to adapt to changing customers. For the public, it's a charming, sometimes disconcerting mirror of who we really are. Underhill &amp; his Envirosell company, are credited as being the founders of the science of shopping. For decades, he's been leading blue-chip clients into retail trenches. Like a modern-day Margaret Mead observing the local mail, his firm records &amp; measures what goes on in stores as we wander or rush about, find what we want &amp; sometimes do the unexpected. From base camps in NYC, Milan &amp; Sydney, he &amp; his colleagues follow in person &amp; on videotape between 50-70,000 shoppers a year thru their retail experiences in stores, banks &amp; public offices. (They record some 20,000 hours of what he reports to be generally some of the most dull videotape imaginable.) He explains how consumer &amp; retail marketing has gone from being a war to being a bar fight, an environment in which Coke iscompeting not only with Pepsi, but with every product on promotional display. The marketing tools of retail &amp; package-goods industries no longer work as well as they used to. The gender models that have driven stores &amp; designers have become obsolete. There's a reason why the Jeep Cherokee comes with a driver's side makeup mirror. "Why We Buy" looks at men trying to buy gifts in lingerie stores &amp; women seeking attention, service &amp; respect in car dealerships &amp; technology stores. It reveals men as more promiscuous buyers &amp; softer touches for klds, as well as how a woman will stay longer in a store if she's with a woman friend. "Why We Buy" explains why we do what we do, notice what we notice, ignore what we ignore &amp; buy what we buy. It tells why women won't linger in narrow aisles, why the Internet cannot replace shopping mails, how hardware stores are learning to adapt to women &amp; how men are beginning to shop like women, how working women have altered the way supermarkets are laid out &amp; why the person in charge at a branch bank sits farthest from the front door. "Why We Buy" amuses &amp; instructs. It will change forever the way you look at stores &amp; at yourself.
language: English
title: Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping
titlecomplete: Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping
genres: Social Science, Cultural, Sociology, Science, Buisness, Psychology, Design, Nonfiction, Business, Economics
ratings_count: 13270
publisher: Simon & Schuster (NYC)