Publication Date:December 30, 2008 Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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ISBN13: 9781416595243
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Condition: New
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Product Description Revolutionary retail guru Paco Underhill is back with a completely revised edition of his classic, witty bestselling book on our ever-evolving consumer culture -- full of fresh observations and important lessons from the cutting edge of retail, which is taking place in the world's emerging markets. New material includes:
• The latest trends in online retail -- what retailers are doing right and what they're doing wrong -- and how nearly every Internet retailer from iTunes to Amazon can drastically improve how it serves its customers.
• A guided tour of the most innovative stores, malls and retail environments around the world -- almost all of which are springing up in countries where prosperity is new. An enormous indoor ski slope attracts shoppers to a mall in Dubai; an uber luxurious Sao Paolo department store provides its customers with personal shoppers; a mall in South Africa has a wave pool for surfing.
The new Why We Buy is an essential guide -- it offers advice on how to keep your changing customers and entice new and eager ones.
A Worthy Read for the Digital Signage IndustryJuly 13, 2010 Paul Flanigan(West Sacramento, CA USA) One of the challenges that any of us in digital signage face is understanding the end result - the viewer. Regardless of what sector of the industry you live in, whether you're adding special effects to copy in post production, or you're wiring the LCD mount on the shelf, you need to understand why you're doing it. The "why" is the customer.
And there is probably no better body of work where you can learn about the shopper than "Why We Buy." As Mr. Underhill states, "First and foremost, shopping follows social change, and woe to the businessperson who fails to comprehend. Shoppers are fickle today, and their loyalty to brand name - whether of a product or a store - lasts only as long as the afterglow of the most recent shopping experience."
Given the fast-moving evolution of electronic messaging and engagement, this is supremely important because it lays the groundwork for how the book can be interpreted.
Mr. Underhill describes four essential elements of store shopping that are core to the success of a retailer:
* Dwell Time: How long the shopper is in the store. (Studies routinely show that longer store dwell times lead to higher sales.) * Conversation Rate: The percentage of shoppers to actual transactions at the counter. * Waiting Time: Almost a contrast to Dwell Time, the longer a customer has to wait in a store, the lower his or her opinions are of that store. This would be "bad" Dwell Time. * Employee Interaction: Going back to those studies, employee interaction leads to higher sales.
Much of his writing can be directly attributed to the philosophies of in-store signage. The purpose of signs, regardless of whether they are static or digital, is to get someone to do something. Understanding the shopper is the key to effectively using the store (and ultimately the signage) itself as a tool to engage a shopper.
Mr. Underhill provides nuggets of information that fit very well into the world of electronic engagement and interactivity. He notes that "about one-fifth of all shoppers actually see the average product on a supermarket shelf. There's a reliable zone in which shoppers will probably see merchandise. It goes from slightly above eye level down to about knee level." This is important. Part of the equation of compelling content is where a screen goes. If it's placed where no one sees it, then one one sees it. Not good.
Chapter Five, "How To Read A Sign" is worth the price of the book and should be etched in your brain. The chapter covers signage in a store. And almost the entire chapter can be directly translated to our industry by simply placing the word "digital" in front of each instance of the word "sign" or "signage" in the chapter. Even though we are using a new technology for communications, the fundamentals of right message, right place, right time are as accurate as ever.
There are moments in the book where Mr. Underhill steps on the soap box and chastises retailers for their activity, and there is a hint of vitriol in there instead of proactive approach. You can almost tell that he savors those little moments in the book where he can really say what he thinks. However, these little moments feel negative in a body of work that is largely educational and positive.
If you walk into a Barnes and Noble, a Williams-Sonoma, or a Dean and Deluca, you can see the execution of Mr. Underhill's insight on "900 different aspects of shopper-store interaction." I'm guessing all the executives of these organizations have this book on their shelf.
Overall, this is an important work and belongs on the shelf of anyone who is responsible for a customer's behavior in a store. That would be everyone who works in retailing, by the way. This book will help you better understand why people do what they do, so you can better do what you do.
Do be do be do.
Mostly FascinatingJune 24, 2010 E L(New York, NY) A more appropriate title would be "How We Buy." The book does not go into the emotions of buying or how and why we decide to buy items, which I thought would be included in the book. The author mostly talks about shopping behaviors and how retailers can improve the shopping experience. The author also talks about some interesting trends. I was very interested to learn about the nature of the author's business and about his observations. For example, the observations that we make most of our shopping decisions in the store, and the importance of adjacencies were extremely interesting and I think of the utmost importance for entrepreneurs to consider.
However, I must echo another reviewer who did not like the end of this book. I wasn't bothered by the author pumping his business as much as I was disappointed in the author's analysis of the internet. It was weak compared to the in-depth analysis that is the rest of the book, and it sounds like he has a bone to pick with Amazon and some other online retailers. That aside, I recommend this highly for anyone in sales, as it will make you think much more critically about how your customers interact with your store and products.
Should left off the last few chaptersMay 16, 2010 Susan S. Averello Paco Underhill stresses always want your customers wanting to come but he doesn't follow his own advice. He starts by saying he revised this especially to revisit internet shopping(he never uses the term e-commerce). His B&M insights seem spot on, fascinating reading. Then he comes to the chapter label The Internet. He starts by saying he was boo'd down in 97 by people defending the internet - only to say he was right the internet is a wasteland. He uses 2 examples, Amazon and iTunes, mainly to complain that neither site was able to give him suggestions unrelated to what he has previously purchased. He sounded like an old man who never learned to use the internet and completely unaware of what was there and didn't care. He should have left the subject alone instead of being so negative about a topic he is obviously unfamiliar with. The next few chapters just rambled on about his company and how it went global-completely self-serving. Good read but really left a bad taste in my mouth. Made me want to avoid reading anything else by him. Felt like he showed his true colors in the end.
No Longer So RelevantFebruary 7, 2010 Jiang Xueqin(Toronto, Canada) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
Great read but does not explain why people buy.February 2, 2010 R. Blanchard 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a beautifully-written book but it does not explain why people buy. It talks anecdotally about how merchants can create a more pleasant and informative buying environment for shoppers. This is an important subject and is where Underhill's has considerable experience and expertise. He makes a lot of suggestions about further improvements he would like to see in the consumer's shopping experience. He seems to really struggle to explain the Internet's impact on shopping. The later part of the book, which appears to have been written about a decade after the original publication, has an end-of-career feel to it with lots of retrospective comments and bouquets tossed in all directions. Again, terrific writing and some interesting personal observations, philosophies and travel experiences but not a full-bodied explanation as to why people buy.
