Business

Underhill, Paco. Why We Buy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Everyone likes to think of him or herself as a savvy shopper. However, Paco Underhill's book Why We Buy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999) reveals that we are often not nearly as smart as we would like to think we are to resist the power of marketing. Have you ever wandered through a supermarket, cursing the fact that what you need (perishable items like milk and eggs, for example) are in the most inconvenient section, only to remember that you also 'need' many extraneous items on your way? This placement of necessary items is deliberate. Underhill examines how even the width of the store aisles is carefully determined -- women, for example, are more uncomfortable with what Underhill calls the 'butt-brush' factor, namely narrow aisles or low product placement that requires customers to bend over and to become uncomfortably close to another customer (Underhill 117).

Reading Underhill's book enables a reader to more easily spot when he or she is being manipulated -- by music, store ambiance, and free samples. It also illustrates the specific ways stores are organized reveal cultural trends -- before, men used to never make child-related purchases or take children with them shopping. Now, areas that sell men's jeans need to have 'stroller room,' and McDonald's commercials depict men taking their children for a Big Mac as a secret 'dad date' (Underhill 108-109).

Underhill believes in the tactile power of shopping, and states that it is a fantasy that brick and mortar stores could ever be replaced by the Internet -- the web is good for product reviews, comparison shopping, and some items, such as impersonal gifts but the physical experience of shopping is irreplaceable (Underhill 213). Shopping has become a pastime, a source of fun, a hobby, for many Americans, and retailers are still profiting off of this long-standing trend, as well as striving to make malls, supermarkets, and other venues more like amusement parks than retail centers.