Buy, sell: tricks of the trade

In the name of shopping science, Paco Underhill has crawled through stores on his hands and knees, aimlessly roamed mall parking lots and conducted field trips to women’s restrooms for wide-eyed males.

As a “retail anthropologist,” he studies shoppers in their natural habitat -- the suburban mall -- and helps merchants figure out the best way to empty customers’ wallets. His clients range from Sunglass Hut to Saks Fifth Avenue. He also writes books about his research.

Last week, Underhill took a break from promoting his newest volume, “Call of the Mall” (Simon & Schuster), to amble around the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, pointing out merchandising gimmicks and blunders.

He began in the foyer of JCPenney, an area he calls “the landing strip” or “decompression zone.” As shoppers enter a mall from outdoors, their walking speed downshifts and their eyes need time to adjust to the lighting. “This transition stage is one of the most critical things we’ve learned in two decades of studying how shoppers move through retail environments,” Underhill explains in “Call of the Mall.” If merchandise is placed too close to the door, it doesn’t get noticed, he says.

Many department stores locate perfume counters near the entrance, a throwback to pre-automobile days when fragrance sections were “a bulwark against the stench of horse manure coming in from the street.”

After zipping through Penney’s, Underhill steps into the heart of Del Amo, a retail behemoth so sprawling it contains two Victoria’s Secrets, two Carlton Cards and two Bath & Body Works.

As he navigates the mall, Underhill reels off statistics, trivia and play-by-play commentary on the sights around him.

Most of his banter zeroes in on “ways that merchants shoot themselves in the foot,” such as a maternity store with aisles too narrow for baby strollers or a clothing shop with barebones fitting rooms. “Why don’t we do a better job of romancing the dressing room?” he asks, going on to recommend adjustable lighting that simulates outdoor and indoor environments. “The dressing room is often the least glamorous part of a store, and yet it’s where so much of the decision-making happens.”

In Robinsons-May, he notes the contrast between the sleek cosmetics displays and the clutter behind the counter -- clunky beige cash registers, 1980s-era telephones and frayed notebooks. If the store is trying to peddle glamour, he says, it should modernize the entire operation.

At Styles, a women’s clothier, Underhill spots a mistake so common he can’t resist meddling. With no clerks around to stop him, he bolts for the display window and starts rearranging the mannequins.

A moment later, he returns outside to explain his handiwork: Most mall window displays are aimed straight ahead, which means the only way to see them as you stroll past is to crane your neck unnaturally or walk sideways. A better method, he says, is to face the display slightly sideways, so the shopper sees it while approaching the store.

Hmm. That sounds fine if the customer arrives from the right side, but what about people approaching from the opposite direction? Wouldn’t they see only the backs of the mannequins? Yes, Underhill says, but they’ll be vastly outnumbered. That’s because research shows that most mall pedestrians follow a counterclockwise loop through a mall -- except in Britain, where people drive on the left side of the road and thus prefer a clockwise path as pedestrians.

Underhill, a self-described “tall, bald, stuttering research wonk” who spends a third of his time on the road (“There are more than 100 American malls to which I could give you accurate driving directions off the top of my head,” he notes), has seen just about everything in retail. He can tell you, for example, that products displayed on tables sell better than those on shelves or racks.

But he’s in for a surprise at Hermit Crab, a kiosk vendor near the middle of the mall. It’s a tub of beach sand crawling with tiny crabs in hand-painted shells. It’s an eye-catcher, but Underhill finds it slightly creepy: “This is a testament to the fact that we are fascinated by critters ... but how soon will it be before the ASPCA [cracks down]?”

In his book, Underhill, 52, devotes a short chapter to kiosks, which originated in Boston’s Faneuil Hall shopping center and have become cash cows for mall owners, with annual leases running as high as $50,000 for a 45-square-foot cart.

Other chapters explore the psychology behind mall food courts, shoe departments, parking garages and cosmetics counters. “Here’s a bit of voodoo [used] in the world of high-end cosmetics,” he writes. “They never go on sale. Ever. Because women, it is thought, will not buy discounted cosmetics.” Instead, manufacturers offer “gifts-with-purchase.” Spend a certain amount and receive a free gift valued at $25. “The point is to give you the sensation of having saved $25 without having to discount the cosmetics.”

Makeup and most other mall products are usually bought on impulse, he says: “Two-thirds of what we buy, we had no intention of buying when we came in.” The trick for store owners is figuring out how to trigger those impulses.

One popular technique is the “six-second greeting,” which requires clerks to greet shoppers no later than six seconds after they’ve entered the store, on the theory that customers who talk with employees are more likely to buy.

But that can backfire.

If a cosmetics clerk approaches a shopper within the first 30 seconds, it scares the person off, according to Underhill’s research. “The trick is to let the customer browse unaided, then watch her carefully for the first time she raises her head, even for a second.... It’s the equivalent of a jerk on a fishing line -- that’s the moment the sales associate needs to start reeling her in.”

Another factor retailers must deal with is the nonshopper. “We once studied a store that sold dishes and tabletops and so on,” he explains. “Many women came in with their husbands, but the men got bored tagging along and, as a result, the women seemed pressured.” The solution was adding products for men, such as cocktail shakers and shot glasses. “When that happened, the men went off on their own, and total shopping time for couples rose.” So did sales.

“Call of the Mall,” written in a conversational tone, is aimed as much at shoppers as retail insiders. And it’s chock-full of research trivia:

* On a city street, men walk faster than women. In a mall, it’s the opposite. Slowpoke walkers are known in the industry as meanderthals.

* By age 50, the human eye lets in 20% less light, but store and restaurant designers are typically young, and “what they think looks bright enough is too dark for customers middle-aged and older.”

* To remember where their car is parked, men prefer numbers and letters, women like colors, and kids respond to symbols such as animals or fruit.

Underhill is both intrigued and repulsed by malls. On the one hand, he considers them a fascinating barometer of culture. “The retail arena is still the best place I know for seeing what people wear and eat and look like, [and] how they interact with their parents and friends and lovers and kids,” he writes.

But he also considers the hermetically sealed environment sterile and unimaginative. “Somehow, the glorious history of commerce has culminated in a sanitized architectural cliche in which you typically find not exquisite treasures and exotic wares but rather 80 different styles of sneaker or 16 varieties of chocolate chip cookie.”

In the book and at Del Amo, he offers dozens of prescriptions for improvement, such as providing shopping carts or handbaskets (stores with carts sell more goods, he notes). Underhill also urges designers to crawl around their stores on all fours, to see things from a child’s viewpoint. “Kids can be your allies or your enemies,” he says, adding that some stores have special lights that project cartoon dinosaurs onto the floor to keep kids entertained.

Another suggestion involves public restrooms. Underhill proposes handing them over to shops that sell soaps and bath products as a way to showcase products and improve the overall mall ambience. “Talk to any woman and you quickly learn how pleasant bathrooms make prolonged visits possible,” he writes.When asked which stores do the best job of avoiding the types of blunders described in his book, Underhill cites home and kitchen stores Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma. They are “wonderful” with visuals, music, even smell, he says. They appeal to aging baby boomers who want to “feather their nests” with luxury goods.

But overall, he believes, mall retailing is in trouble.

During the 1970s and ‘80s, a new mall opened every three or four days, he says. But the heyday is over. Some malls have been converted to government offices, manufacturing centers or churches. Others are losing ground to high-powered strip malls -- anchored by five or six big chain shops, such as Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Home Depot, Old Navy and Bed Bath & Beyond -- or outdoor malls designed to resemble small villages or Main Streets.

Is the mall doomed as a species? Not yet, he says, but perhaps it deserves to be. The mall, he writes, “could be much better -- more vivid, intelligent, adventurous, entertaining, imaginative, alive with the human quest for art and beauty and truth. But it’s not. It’s the mall.”