SHOP ‘TIL YOU DROP : When It Comes to Spending, Orange County Ranks No. 1

From inside Bullock’s on the first official day of Christmas buying, you could see the early shoppers out front waiting to get in.

It was 7:30 in the morning, and they were sipping free coffee and shivering. But they were eager and ready to spend.

Bullock’s and other South Coast Plaza stores marshaled their staffs and threw open their doors to the early birds at 8 a.m. that day--the day after Thanksgiving.

For stores like Bullock’s, Orange County shoppers are retailing’s golden geese. They are a breed apart, an economic phenomenon.

No one spends like Orange County shoppers. They flood the malls not only during the holidays but in February and May too. Last year, Orange Countians spent an average of $6,320 per person at retail stores, the third highest average in the state, according to the Board of Equalization. By spring 1987, Orange County had moved to No. 1.

Given the clout of the Southern California retail market, that probably makes Orange County shoppers world class as well.

“It’s easy to say people in Orange County are affluent, and that explains it,” said Mark Baldassare, a professor of social ecology and sociology at UC Irvine who has been conducting attitude surveys in the county since 1982.

“It probably goes beyond that to a life style that is more focused on spending and keeping up with the Joneses.”

Or with the Bentons.

Alice Benton works as a financial administrator in a dentist’s office, but her real vocation is declared by the sign in her car window: “Born to Shop.” She and her 15 credit cards were waiting in the 7 a.m. chill for Bullock’s doors to open.

An untimely injury--torn tendons in her right shoulder--had not kept her out of the game. To carry all her packages she had brought her 12-year-old son. His name is Cash.

Cash said he, too, loves spending money, but not the way his mother loves it. He estimated that she would spend $500 very quickly that day.

“Oh, at least, “ she said.

While living in Mission Viejo, she developed an attachment to Orange County shopping centers that persists today, even though in 1980 she moved 140 miles away to Ridgecrest in the Mojave Desert.

So she drives the distance regularly to shop in Orange County. Then during the first weekend of each December, she goes on vacation from her family--and shops in Orange County.

“There’s so much available here,” she said. “And it’s fun to compare.”

But, she added, she’s not much of a shopper compared to the “professionals” she encounters inside.

Patricia Hamilton--formerly of Palm Beach, Fla., but now living in Newport Beach--has seen some of the “pros” from her vantage point as supervisor of the handbag department at the Gucci shop in South Coast Plaza.

She has lived in Orange County two years, she said, and although she considers herself a shop-till-you-drop consumer, she is amazed at the Orange County eagerness to spend.

“Working at Gucci’s, I handle the higher-priced merchandise,” Hamilton said. “But people don’t bat an eye at the price. They don’t even care.”

Most of her customers come from Newport Beach, but “people who can’t afford it will save every penny, just to have a Gucci bag,” she said. “It’s wild out here. People are different.”

Such attitudes have given Orange County a reputation for being the Rolls-Royce of consumer markets. It is only fitting then that for the past decade, Orange County’s Rolls-Royce franchise has ranked first or second in sales for the entire nation, according to sales manager Roger Fletcher of Newport Auto Center.

Baldassare said there is “a social phenomenon at play in Orange County that sort of accentuates the spending.”

He said that during his six years of surveying Orange County attitudes he has interviewed about 20,000 residents on various topics. “About four in 10 people describe themselves as being above middle class in orientation,” he said.

“That’s a lot of people who consider themselves upper middle class or higher, and they are busy trying to prove it. And one of the obvious ways is by buying more and spending more. You get into this whole spirit of conspicuous consumption.”

Sy Lieberman, a social psychologist whose New York-based Lieberman Research Inc. conducts Money magazine’s annual consumer attitude poll, said the shopping urge is abetted by the change in the nation’s view of wealth.

“There was a period way back--around the ‘60s--when it was socially acceptable to put down material possessions,” Lieberman said. “At the time, people said that making money, acquiring things, that sort of thing, wasn’t what it was all cracked up to be. It was called reverting to basic values.

“That’s all changed. People are back into worrying about getting jobs, majoring in college in things that will help them get a job. People seem to be back to the materialism thing.”

Baldassare said a more subtle force is at work that helps fuel the spending urge in Orange County, “and one of these days I’ll be able to prove it scientifically.”

He said Orange County’s was one of the first regional economies in the country to virtually abandon manufacturing as an economic base and turn to selling goods and services as its main business. He is encountering an underlying feeling “in many people that it’s one of their civic duties to be out there shopping in South Coast Plaza and spending their money.”

“You hear it reported in the media: Are consumers being ‘generous’ or ‘tight’? It’s a wonderful psychology, when you think about it. People used to feel guilty about not saving money. Now they start feeling guilty about not spending it. Especially around Christmas. The message is, if the consumer doesn’t ‘come through,’ it’ll be bad for the people who work in department stores,” Baldassare said.

“I think that boils down to being a kind of rationalization for spending, but it’s certainly an excuse for being a big spender in Orange County.”

Big spenders and little spenders by the tens of thousands each week seek bargains and hidden treasures or just enjoy roaming the aisles at another Orange County shopping institution: the swap meet.

Connie Pechmann, a Cal State Fullerton professor of marketing, said swap meets have an appeal over their conventional cousins, suburban shopping malls, for consumers who “are kind of bored with the whole feel of a mall. The stores, the employees, the look of inside of the mall is all the same.”

At the swap meet you can find much-used furniture displayed upon well-worn carpets or $1,600 wooden moose heads, smiling bears and other works of art personally carved from logs with a chain saw. If your tastes are more traditional, you can buy a spanking new sofa or select from a veritable showroom of spas.

Beyond bargains and crafts, there is another appeal.

“The people getting the profit are sitting right in front of you,” said Pechmann, who specializes in buyer behavior. “You feel like you are not supporting . . . companies that are big and anonymous. You are helping this woman and her family. It’s got that homey feel, not that commercial feel.”

Baldassare said the central section of Orange County, populated mostly by blue-collar workers, “is probably not affected by the (extravagant buying) trends we’re talking about here. We have people who have a lot bigger concerns than shopping till they drop.”

But on the other hand, “there’s a factor we can’t ignore: the young urban professional. We do have a yuppie factor. We do have a segment that both has the cash on hand and tends to have a focus on consumption and acquisition.”

Lieberman said his research indicates that shopping “is a much stronger compulsion with younger people. Older people are much more rational and practical, but the younger have much less tolerance for delayed gratification. That’s why the yuppies are the top spenders. They have both the drive and the means.”

Donna E. Wager, 26, of Santa Ana eats at fast-food restaurants so she will have more time to shop. “When you are on the go, you don’t have time to lounge around,” said Wager, whose license plate reads M I L 8 YET. “Especially at lunchtime. . . . You want to go shopping. You want to grab a hamburger and hit the mall.”

“One of the interesting things we find,” said Lieberman, “is that shopping intensity can be triggered by emotional moods, either a good mood or a bad mood. We do get some variation. Higher-income people are more apt to go on a spree when they’re in a good mood. For the high-income people, it’s a way of rewarding themselves. There’s kind of an economic euphoria in high-income areas.

“But for the poor, a shopping spree is for relieving anxiety and tedium.”

For Dan Ahl of Santa Ana, shopping sprees are a way of life. Every Sunday he sets up shop at the Orange County swap meet, selling used material he bought earlier in the week at thrift stores.

“I have an antique store in Ontario,” Ahl said. “I do antiques and junk. This stuff (at the swap meet) is junk.”

Lieberman said no one should be surprised at the spiraling intensity of shopping in Orange County. “The community attracts certain kinds of people, and once there, to stay au courant with peers, they have to maintain. But the people attracted there are probably already predisposed to that life style. It’s circular.”

This predisposition may lead to heavy debt, but there is much less compulsive spending than popularly believed, Lieberman said. “Like anything else done to excess, at a certain point it gets out of control, but it’s more a manifestation of an addictive personality” than of social pressures, he said.

Many people go to Orange County’s shopping malls and spend very little, Baldassare said. They can be window shoppers or youths who have little money but who just like to spend time there.

“When people in cities are lonely or depressed or just plain bored, they normally would find their way to the downtown just to be part of things,” Baldassare said. “In places like Orange County and other suburbs, the shopping mall takes the place of the stroll downtown.

“You have to keep in mind that we’ve created some very attractive places to go and do shopping, and that, of course, brings people back again and again. There’s always something new going on.”

The mall as a place where new things are happening, where you are surrounded by sumptuous architecture and decor, is a cultured image.

JMB Federated Realty of Cincinnati, a developer of MainPlace in Santa Ana--Orange County’s newest shopping mall--did extensive market research in Orange County and concluded that “the key to success is a creation of an image of quality,” said Rohan Andrew, president of the firm’s market research subsidiary.

“It is a very rich and cosmopolitan marketplace. While the fashion designers of Paris and New York like to think they are setting fashion trends, it is always with an eye to the Southern California market to see which of those fashions gain immediate acceptance.”

The firm’s research showed that the upscale Orange County shopper regularly shops at three to five shopping malls each month and is willing to travel 10 to 15 miles to do it, he said.

That phenomenon is no different from what studies found in Orange County more than 20 years ago, he said. But now there are more of those shoppers and more places competing for them.

Shopping centers compete with decor and design, Andrew said. MainPlace retailers are so confident of the return on this expense that they already have invested large sums.

MainPlace designers adopted a motif that suggests the cast-iron ornamentation of Victorian railroad stations. The design is taken almost to amusement-park lengths.

The more posh and pleasing shopping areas become, the more they become the community’s social center, Baldassare said.

If not that already, the glittery Orange County shopping mall is on its way to being a genuinely high-status locale. “It’s not only a way to keep abreast of new things in music and clothing styles,” Lieberman said, “it’s becoming a way of being seen.”