Why We Buy Paco Underhill Summary

Everything can be broken down and resolved by science, even something as common as shopping. Why We Buy was written by author Paco Underhill, an environmental psychologist, in 1999. In Underhill’s book, he studies and records the behaviors of shoppers in multiple retail stores. Underhill’s goals are to aid in increasing sales for the store, to enhance the layout of the store, and to advance accessibly and comfort for the shopper. His book is a record of his findings and contains five sections. For this project, I chose to observe the J. Crew Mercantile in Rookwood and relate my findings there back to the book.
The section “The Mechanics of Shopping” is based on capturing the attention of the shopper. Throughout his research, Underhill has discovered that shoppers maintain a fast walking pace from the parking lot and continue this into
According to Underhill, knowing and understanding the demographics of shoppers is very important. Women tend to move slower through stores and will be more likely to shop for fun, rather than make an actual purchase. Men typically prefer to move quickly through a store and are less price conscious than women. Therefore, it is easier to make a sale to men than women. However, men are less likely to ask for help or for the location of a product (Underhill 104). I noticed this while observing shoppers at J. Crew, none of the men stayed in the store for very long nor talked to the sales associates. I noted that unlike the men, a group of women stayed for at least thirty minutes and were not only consulting the sales assistants, but also discussing their purchases with their friends. Even after all of this, the women only ended up buying one or two of the items they tried on. To help get men to stay in the store longer and make more purchases, J. Crew could have other male assistants reach out and offer their