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Shopping Through the Lens of Science: Unveiling Retail's Hidden Patterns
When you walk into a store, do you ever wonder why certain products catch your eye, or why you instinctively turn right after entering? These aren't random occurrences but carefully orchestrated elements of retail science. Paco Underhill's groundbreaking work "Why We Buy" has transformed how businesses understand consumer behavior, becoming required reading at business schools worldwide and influencing retail design across the globe. Since its publication, the book has sold over 1.2 million copies and been translated into 27 languages. Even retail giants like Starbucks and Apple have incorporated Underhill's principles into their store designs. What began as an unconventional career path for an urban planning graduate has evolved into a revolutionary approach that combines anthropology with commerce. Through his company Envirosell, Underhill has conducted research for brands like Microsoft, McDonald's, and Adidas, fundamentally changing how we understand the shopping experience.
2장
The Birth of Shopping Science
I observe shoppers in their natural habitat-the retail environment. Like an anthropologist studying a newly discovered tribe, I track customers as they touch merchandise, check price tags, and navigate store layouts. This is the science of shopping, a discipline that didn't exist when I began. In 1997, academia knew more about Papua New Guinea marketplaces than your local supermarket.
Our most important research tool remains the humble track sheet wielded by our field researchers who stealthily follow shoppers through stores, documenting their every move. We don't hire academic researchers who come burdened with theories; instead, we employ creative types-artists, playwrights, actors-who observe with open minds. They learn to stand close enough to study shoppers without being noticed, positioning themselves to the side where peripheral vision registers them as just another customer.
Some of our most valuable insights have come from happy accidents. We discovered the "butt-brush effect" while reviewing footage of a department store entrance that happened to capture a nearby tie rack. Shoppers would approach the rack but abandon their shopping after being bumped once or twice by passing customers. Women especially disliked being touched from behind, explaining why that particular fixture underperformed despite its prime location. When the store president moved the rack just off the main aisle, sales jumped substantially.
In our comprehensive studies, we synthesize every bit of information into a detailed portrait of retail spaces. For a major jeans manufacturer, we studied four department stores in a single weekend, mapping displays, tracking 727 shoppers, and observing countless more on camera. We focused particularly on "doorways"-paths leading into or out of store sections-to determine optimal product and signage placement.
My approach to studying shopping owes much to William H. Whyte, the pioneering "scientist of the street" who used time-lapse photography and observation to study how people use public spaces. Our studies prove that the longer shoppers remain in a store, the more they buy, and this time depends on comfort and enjoyment. When I started this book, Envirosell pioneered the science of shopping; now many firms claim to do what we do-but most are just technologies in search of an application.
3장
The Mechanics of Human Movement in Retail Spaces
The first principle of shopping science is that retail environments must be tailored to human physical and anatomical characteristics-what we call "the biological constants." Despite differences in gender, age, income, tastes, population density, weather, security considerations and economic factors across regions, human shoppers share fundamental similarities.
The decompression zone-that area just inside a store's entrance-is where shoppers are still transitioning from outside to inside. They're slowing down, adjusting their eyes to lighting changes, and processing sensory information. Whatever's placed in this zone is largely wasted, as shoppers aren't truly "present" yet. They need a landing strip before they can focus on merchandise or signage. This explains why greeting customers too quickly, placing information kiosks near entrances, or expecting shoppers to notice displays in this area often fails.
Human anatomy fundamentally limits shopping behavior-we have only two hands, and most shoppers arrive with one already occupied by a purse, bag or coat. This creates a natural ceiling on purchases: once both hands are full, shopping typically ends. The solution isn't just placing baskets at entrances but strategically positioning them throughout stores where shoppers actually need them. Baskets should be visible, accessible without stooping, and appropriate for the merchandise-like canvas totes for books rather than hard plastic baskets with uncomfortable handles.
Signs can't be properly evaluated in conference rooms-they must be tested where shoppers are in motion, distracted, and viewing from imperfect angles. Each store zone suits only certain types of communication, with placement as crucial as content. Strategic locations include: where shoppers wait (shoe departments, bathroom stalls, escalators), positioned to interrupt natural sight lines, and placed just a few feet from where people naturally look.
Understanding how humans physically move is crucial to store design. A good store exposes the greatest portion of merchandise to the most shoppers for the longest time. People slow down near reflective surfaces but speed up past banks. More importantly, shoppers invariably drift to the right upon entering stores (though this varies somewhat by country and culture). This right-leaning bias means the front-right section of any store is prime real estate for important merchandise requiring maximum exposure.
The forward-facing nature of human movement creates a fundamental retail design problem. Most stores are designed for mythical sideways-walking shoppers rather than real humans who look ahead while walking. This means shoppers must uncomfortably turn their heads to see merchandise on shelves as they pass. Inside stores, endcaps work brilliantly because shoppers approach them head-on. Chevroning-placing shelves at 45-degree angles rather than perpendicular to walls-dramatically improves visibility but requires about 20% more floor space.
Only about one-fifth of shoppers actually see the average supermarket product. The prime visibility zone extends from slightly above eye level down to knee level-anything higher or lower falls into a visibility dead zone. Large items should occupy these challenged spaces, and packaging should be designed for visibility from disadvantageous angles with high-contrast colors and large type.
4장
The Gender Divide: How Men and Women Shop Differently
Women's and men's shopping roles are changing with demographics. While women now have more education and money than ever before, traditional divisions persist-men still lead in car purchases and buy outdoor items while women handle indoor purchases. Only 24% of American households are traditional nuclear families, making nontraditional buyers increasingly important.
When women shop with men, they spend significantly less time in stores (4:41 minutes versus 8:15 with female companions). Smart retailers employ two strategies: provide comfortable waiting areas for men (like barbershop-style spaces with TVs and magazines) or actively engage men in shopping. For example, Pfaltzgraff created barware sections after noticing men gravitated toward glassware, while Thomasville used construction-focused displays to interest men in furniture.
While men's shopping habits are becoming better understood, retailers still struggle with making cross-gender shopping comfortable. Men often find buying women's gifts intimidating without knowing sizes or preferences. Gender boundaries in retail continue blurring-women freely borrow men's clothing styles without threatening their femininity, though the reverse remains less common.
Modern fatherhood has dramatically changed male shopping patterns. Today's fathers push strollers, buy children's clothing, and need baby supplies, yet retailers haven't fully adapted with masculine diaper bags or stroller-friendly store layouts. Men's personal care products remain problematic too-typically buried in feminine-dominated beauty sections rather than merchandised in dedicated "men's health" departments with appropriate masculine packaging and positioning.
The chapter begins by lamenting the disappearance of traditional hardware stores and other retail institutions that couldn't adapt to women's changing needs. Shopping remains fundamentally female-oriented, with men essentially engaging in "what is inherently a female activity." Women's changing lifestyles have killed off entire retail categories-from sewing machines (once in 75% of American homes, now under 5%) to paper grocery coupons (less than 3% redemption rate).
A supermarket study perfectly captures the fundamental differences between male and female shopping approaches. Women shop methodically, examining everything thoroughly before making selections, while men grab items quickly without comparison. When couples shop together, husbands often bring items for wives' inspection until frustrated wives take over. These behaviors demonstrate women's research-oriented approach versus men's efficiency-driven style.
5장
Adapting Retail for an Aging Population
By 2025, nearly one-fifth of Americans will be 65 or older, creating a demographic revolution. Unlike previous generations who grew up during the Depression and World War II, baby boomers raised in affluent decades won't accept aging limitations stoically. They'll remain active consumers with significant wealth and purchasing power, demanding products and services that accommodate their needs.
Human eyes begin deteriorating around age forty, making small type difficult to read, affecting color perception, and reducing light reaching the retina. This affects everything from cereal boxes to medication labels. The aging population struggles with tiny text on products, menus, and instructions. By 2025, anything smaller than thirteen-point type will be commercial suicide. The yellowing cornea means subtle color distinctions become invisible-blue and green become difficult to distinguish, and everything takes on a yellowish tint. Packaging and signage will need maximum contrast with more black, white and red.
Aging brings physical limitations beyond visual challenges. Senior citizenship will last decades longer than ever before, requiring spaces to accommodate both active sixty-five-year-olds and less mobile eighty-five-year-olds. Many retirement condos with stairs became obsolete as residents aged. Future retail environments will need wider doorways, elevators, aisles, and bathrooms to accommodate motorized wheelchairs and walkers. Multilevel malls will become inconvenient for one-fifth of the population.
Banking illustrates the challenges of introducing technology to seniors. Getting older customers to use ATMs requires careful instruction, preferably from contemporaries rather than young staff. ATMs need larger buttons, screens and text. Similarly, self-service machines at post offices, gas stations, and airports need redesign for aging eyes and hands. Cell phones, remote controls, and keyboards are miniaturizing themselves out of the senior market.
Despite seniors being the fastest-growing demographic segment (Americans over 65 will more than double by 2035), retail innovation focuses on youth markets like Abercrombie and American Eagle. The aging population wants stylish yet suitable clothing and experiences rather than accumulating more possessions. Future mobility aids will likely evolve beyond traditional wheelchairs into personal vehicles with brand-name appeal, resembling motorcycles or tractors rather than medical equipment.
6장
The Sensory Experience of Shopping
What is shopping beyond simple acquisition of necessities? It's a deeply sensory experience where humans use sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing to make purchase decisions. Scent has become the new frontier in marketing, with stores strategically using aromas to trigger sales-from baby powder in infant apparel stores to freshly ironed linen in appliance sections. But sensory marketing requires careful targeting; what appeals to one demographic might repel another.
The "open sell" approach has transformed retail by putting merchandise within customers' reach rather than behind counters, eliminating the need for knowledgeable clerks. This shift coincides with declining brand loyalty-we're all "post-Nader shoppers" who need direct sensory evidence before purchasing. Even for mundane items like soda, we need visual confirmation (seeing frost on cans) before believing they're cold.
Touch is particularly crucial because possession begins emotionally when a shopper's senses engage with an object-once something is in your hand, paying becomes a mere technicality. We're sensory creatures at heart, constantly shopping for information and experience through our five senses, just like children who touch everything they encounter.
Dressing rooms represent the most misguided aspect of store design-treated as mere changing stalls rather than crucial selling tools. When shoppers use dressing rooms, their conversion rate doubles compared to those who merely browse, especially when staff interaction is involved. Customers typically spend between one-quarter and one-third of their total shopping time in these spaces, yet retailers routinely skimp on them, creating stark cubicles with unflattering lighting and poor mirrors.
Even outside dressing rooms, apparel stores often mishandle mirrors-placing too few or positioning them poorly. Mirrors should be wherever merchandise can be tried on or inspected. The farther dressing rooms are from clothes, the fewer shoppers will make the trip. Dressing rooms must be plentiful and clearly marked-finding them shouldn't be a challenge, yet many stores hide them in corners with inconspicuous signage, causing frustrated shoppers to wander aimlessly with garments in hand.
Stores routinely fail at allowing customers to properly test products before buying. In office supply stores, pencil sharpeners sit without batteries, outlets, or even test pencils. Paper is sold in sealed reams with no samples to touch. This penny-wise, pound-foolish approach leads to torn packages and unsalable merchandise. Even jewelry displays can be too "museum-like"-beautiful but distancing.
7장
The Strategic Balance of Design, Merchandising, and Operations
The retail universe is governed by three interdependent elements: design (the physical space), merchandising (the products), and operations (what employees do). These "Big Three" are completely intertwined-changing one inevitably affects the others. When display designers create wire grid shelving without considering real-world use, they save on design costs but create operational headaches as employees must constantly straighten tilting products.
Retail decisions must be examined for their far-reaching implications across all three domains. Unfortunately, in many companies, the heads of Design, Merchandising and Operations barely communicate. This leads to shortsighted decisions, like the department store that shrank the register area in ladies' shoes to display more inventory. While this added a dozen more shoe pairs on display, it forced clerks to place shopping bags on the floor, adding steps to the sales process.
Today's retail environment faces particular stress as businesses constantly try to reduce labor costs. When stores were properly staffed with knowledgeable employees, design and merchandising demands were simpler. Now, with retailers undervaluing sales staff, the burden shifts to design and merchandising to compensate. Interactive computer fixtures often fail to adequately replace human assistance, and understaffed departments resort to overstocking fixtures, making it difficult for customers to access merchandise.
In retail, good times are when customers shop, and bad times are when they wait. The single most important factor in determining a shopper's opinion of service is waiting time. While waits under 90 seconds are perceived accurately, anything longer becomes distorted in the shopper's mind-a two-minute wait feels like three or four. Taking care of customers in two minutes is success; three minutes is failure.
The time shoppers spend waiting after employee contact feels shorter than time before interaction. Simply acknowledging customers relieves anxiety, especially early in the wait. Some managers effectively work the front lines during busy periods, acting as line managers who can answer questions and prepare customers for checkout. Even imprecise wait time estimates (like "one to five minutes" for tech support) help manage expectations and reduce anxiety.
Americans prefer single-file, fair queuing systems rather than chaotic masses. When customers see they're being helped in arrival order, perceived waiting time decreases. While single-line systems are most equitable, they can appear intimidating. Retailers like Best Buy use merchandised maze systems, while Whole Foods employs mini-lines with electronic displays directing customers to available registers-both improving on traditional chaos while maintaining customer flow.
8장
The Global Evolution of Retail
To find retail's cutting edge today, look to places where money is young-freshly minted wealth in cities like Dublin, Moscow, and Sao Paulo. By 2010, most retail growth will happen in emerging markets where well-trained merchants serve emerging customers.
Dubai has transformed into a 21st-century shopping crossroads with extraordinary malls like Mall of the Emirates featuring an indoor ski slope, and Ibn Battuta Mall celebrating Islamic architecture. South Africa's Gateway Mall incorporates a surfing school with wave machines and skateboard parks, while another South African mall brilliantly places a high school sports stadium next to its food court, driving teenage traffic.
Two critical differences separate American and non-U.S. retailers. First, merchant status varies culturally-in America, retail is largely a lower-middle-class profession pioneered by immigrants, while European merchants enjoy social respectability with centuries-old traditions. LVMH operates prestigious luxury retail business schools, and Paris's Galleries Lafayette demonstrates sophisticated marketing that begins the moment you board a plane to France.
Second, geography shapes retail differently-historic, dense urban centers create unique retail environments like Milan's intimate window-shopping streets. North America lacks these concentrated social-class mixing zones, though urban retailing is gaining momentum as city cores gentrify. Meanwhile, the American shopping mall has become a global export, adapted to local cultural codes and security concerns in places like South Africa, Brazil and Mexico.
Shopping malls have become one of America's most successful exports, appearing from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai, but they adapt to local cultural codes and security concerns. In South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, malls serve as protected fiefdoms against dangerous streets. Sao Paulo's Iguatemi exemplifies this hybrid approach with hard-eyed security guards and a uniquely social environment where twentysomethings (who typically live with parents until marriage) can safely meet peers.
American retail isn't standing still. La Gran Plaza outside Fort Worth transformed a dying mall into a vibrant Latino marketplace complete with mariachi bands, Spanish movies, and specialized services like mortgage education and dental jewelry. New York's Fairway in Harlem serves everyone from firemen to suburban businessmen in an exhilarating warehouse setting where platinum Amex cards appear alongside food stamps.
9장
The Future of Shopping in a Digital World
Back in 1997, I faced fierce criticism for suggesting e-commerce wouldn't replace brick-and-mortar stores. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, I felt vindicated, though Web 2.0 eventually rose from the ashes. The Internet's success stems not from its inherent brilliance but from the deterioration of offline alternatives. The web remains fundamentally a massive, unfiltered data dump-simultaneously its greatest strength and weakness.
Facebook represents the virtual solution to the physical isolation created by suburban sprawl and automobile culture. As we spread across disconnected corporate campuses and distant suburbs, Facebook offers a digital passport to intimacy across the void. It's both a social networking tool and voyeuristic playground-like reading someone's diary left open on a couch.
The future of the Internet lies in convergence-the linkup between physical retail, mobile technology, and the web. Customers who interact with retailers across multiple channels (store, catalog, website) are proportionally more valuable. Practical applications include using web-enabled phones to access product information in-store, replacing paper manuals with digital instructions, and transforming phones into digital wallets and ID cards.
This convergence creates greener shopping by eliminating excess packaging and streamlining distribution. In developing nations like India, technology is leapfrogging traditional infrastructure-people without landlines are jumping directly to mobile internet access. This phenomenon will likely take root first in emerging markets before spreading to developed nations.
The digital music landscape fails to match consumers' voracious appetite for music. Despite owning multiple iPods, I find iTunes frustratingly limited-offering only 30-second samples, lacking personalization features, and missing opportunities to enhance the music discovery experience. The music industry has historically been closer to musicians than consumers, failing to recognize we want to buy music by the slice rather than the whole cake.
What's needed is a premium service where experts guide consumers through complete music catalogs, perhaps combining digital downloads with physical spaces where music lovers can gather, guided by knowledgeable hosts. The future might include music clubs where you could cyber-experience concerts, rent or buy music, and connect with a community of like-minded enthusiasts.
10장
The Enduring Humanity of Shopping
The science of shopping is a hybrid discipline-part physical science, part social science, and partly an art. Though I never expected to become a retail expert, my colleagues and I have been bitten by a strange bug that compels us to deconstruct every commercial space we enter. We can't help analyzing and improving shopping environments, much to the annoyance of local merchants and my vacation companion.
Shopping follows social change, with women's evolving roles being the most significant transformation of our time. Watts Wacker suggests men are becoming "exotic household pets" while retail must adapt to women's needs or perish. Customer loyalty lasts only as long as the afterglow of their most recent shopping experience, making poor quarterly results potentially catastrophic.
Despite all the science of shopping principles, creative merchants can successfully break all the rules. My friend Kevin owns Mxyplyzyk, an intentionally unpronounceable store name from Superman comics. His crowded space offers an eclectic product mix with wildly varying price points and primitive checkout processes. Yet he's created a successful selling machine that perfectly reflects his personality-proof that with enough moxie, unconventional approaches can thrive.
Shopping has always been multidimensional, serving social functions beyond mere commerce. It brings people together, provides entertainment, and allows socially acceptable people-watching. The trend of blending shopping with dining experiences continues expanding-from bookstores with coffee bars to clothing stores with lunch counters.
Even museums have embraced retail, creating sophisticated shopping experiences that generate independent income while making shoppers feel virtuous supporting cultural institutions. We increasingly treat stores as museums-places to learn about fashion, technology, or literature-while stores have become temples where we express belief in self-improvement, beauty and knowledge.
Christmas exemplifies this transformation, evolving from religious holiday to commercial savior for retailers. Shopping serves as a dipstick for measuring social change, reflecting evolving trends like disposable fashion, booming farmers' markets, and women's home ownership. The convergence of online shopping and mobile technology continues reshaping brick-and-mortar retail design-but the fundamental human desire to touch, see, and experience products firsthand ensures that physical retail will always have a place in our lives.
