Expert Offers Retailers Glimpse Into Shoppers’ Minds
In his new book, “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping,” retail consultant Paco Underhill explains for shoppers and those who sell to them why consumers head to the store for one item and end up bringing home four others--or none at all. For almost 20 years, Underhill’s New York-based company, Envirosell, has advised retail clients on everything from how to display such products as Wonderbras and doggie treats to understanding the differences in how men and women shop. Times staff writer Abigail Goldman recently interviewed Underhill, who earned a degree in Chinese history before studying and teaching environmental psychology.
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Question: What is the most important thing for shoppers to know about why they buy?
Answer: That probably everything or a significant portion of what they buy is discretionary. For most American consumers going into the 21st century, they really don’t need anything beyond pasta, vegetables, fruit, olive oil and wine. This means that ultimately they are in charge of their own destinies and that the world of retail has gone from a marketing war, where Ralph’s is competing with Safeway or where Coke is competing with Pepsi, to basically a bar fight where everyone is competing with everyone else for the customer’s discretionary dollar.
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Q: What is the most important thing for retailers to know about how to get people to buy?
A: I would say that amenability and profitability are intricately linked, that the degree to which they understand customer needs has a direct effect on their bottom line. A chair has gone from an amenity to a marketing tool. If a woman walks into a store with her significant other and there’s an effective place to plant him, she becomes an infinitely more effective shopper. If we take something that we expect to sell to a 45-year-old woman and merchandise it 18 inches off the ground, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot because it’s uncomfortable to bend down to get it, whereas if I put something selling to a teenager 18 inches off the ground, they’ll find it. We are taking our kids everywhere, and every store manager across the country and across the retail spectrum needs to think about the reality of children being a real presence on the floor. They may not be your prime customer, but the people they bring with them are.
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Q: What are your favorite mistakes that retailers make in terms of store layout and display?
A: One of them is dealing with shopping aids. We are trained when we walk into the grocery store or a mass merchandiser to pick up a cart. But in many other stores, we don’t pick up a shopping aid, and once we get three things in our hands, we stop being a shopping machine. We found a number of ways to put more shopping aids into circulation. Some of it is adjusting the position at which they’re being offered, putting them deeper into the store, training store staff to offer you baskets if they see your hands filled. The thing that puzzles me is how come every American store seems to use those old plastic baskets that are ugly, clumsy to carry and are nothing that we’d want to take home with us. Old Navy gives us nice, cool mesh tote bags and then ask us at checkout if we want to buy them--many people do.
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Q: In your observations of shoppers, what has surprised you the most?
A: I have often been surprised by the degree to which Americans are reading labels, whether it’s on food products or apparel. We’re becoming much better buyers, and the tools of marketing don’t work anywhere near as well as they used to. Many of our purchase decisions are made or influenced at the point of sale. When my dad went out to buy a car in 1957, he knew what kind of car he was going to buy before he left the house. While we in 1999 may have a purchasing predisposition, it is not set in concrete. If we think we are going to go buy a [Jeep] Cherokee and we have an unpleasant experience, we might end up with a Mitsubishi. So many of what were die-hard brand loyalists just aren’t anymore.
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Q: Why do you believe the Web won’t ever totally replace brick-and-mortar stores?
A: The Web is a wonderful tool for retailers to escape some of their traditional constraints. Officedepot.com works where you can order on the Web and use the store as your delivery point. But we are a tactile species. Let’s understand that according to [one study], 80% of what we buy on the Web now are books, music and tape, things that have no smell and, for all practical purposes, have no feeling.
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Q: How have supermarkets changed throughout the years, and why?
A: They have gone from places for chores to places that are trying to give us some sense of pleasure. They have started to use better fixturing--just think of the produce section, where they have gone from white fixturing to black as a way of better showcasing product. They have expanded our vocabulary of foods. (Think of the number of different types of food that you ate 20 years ago versus the variety you consume today.) I think the most profound changes in our culture are being driven by the changing status of women. With two working parents, it is no longer possible to go Saturday morning and buy for the rest of the week. That means we have to bring milk from the back of the store to the front of the store to give us a shallower loop. It means that we have to be open 24 hours. It means that if I can’t get you through the checkout line in as expeditious a manner as possible, I might lose your business to another store that can.
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Q: You have some specific views of consumer electronics retailers; what’s wrong there?
A: The whole electronics-store industry is desperately in need of a make-over. They need to do a better job of hiring store staff that reflects the demographic profile of their intended customers. It’s a little like car dealers, where you are tired of dealing with young males. They need to hire more women, they need to hire more seniors, they need to be less aggressive. You often have the sense that people are selling on commission and therefore sort of giving you a bum’s rush.
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Q: What are the main differences in the way men and women shop?
A: They are historically tied to that sort of hunter-gatherer dichotomy, where men get obsessed about one thing and go shop for one thing, whereas for women, the act of shopping is often a more social occasion. Historically, or culturally, women’s trip to the market has been a source of liberation, it’s a place to escape their families, it’s a place to escape their husbands, exercise their judgment, it’s a place to see other people and be seen by other people. In 1999, women are fulfilling some of those social needs in other contexts. On the other hand, with the changing status of women, men are doing more of the family shopping. Almost every wife has had the experience of sending her husband off to the store and finding that the husband has fallen into drunken sailor behavior on the floor of the market--spending, undisciplined behavior. Women, historically, in going to the supermarket, they are spending family dollars, whereas men--who have historically been programmed as the providers--are spending “their” dollars, and I don’t think they hold on to those dollars quite as tightly. Or many of them don’t.
