Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Why We Buy is a witty and surprising report on our evolving shopping culture. This is a book about us, from moms and dads to seniors and mall rats, and what we do, and don't do, in stores, restaurants and showrooms.

Why We Buy is about the struggle among merchants, marketers and increasingly knowledgeable customers for control. With humor, insight, anecdote and lots of hard data, retail anthropologist Paco Underhill leads the reader through a journey into shopping heaven and hell. For those in retailing and marketing, Why We Buy is a remarkably fresh guide, offering concrete and usable advice on how to adapt to the changing customer. For the general public, Why We Buy is a charming, funny and sometimes disconcerting mirror of who we really are.

Underhill and his company, Envirosell, are credited as being the founders of the science of shopping. For almost two decades, Underhill has been leading blue-chip clients into the retail trenches. Like a modern-day Margaret Mead observing at the local mail, Underhill's firm records and measures with great precision what goes on in stores as we wander or rush about, find what we want and sometimes do the unexpected. From base camps in New York City, Milan and Sydney, Underhill and his colleagues follow in person and on videotape between fifty thousand and seventy thousand shoppers a year through their retail experiences in stores, banks and public offices. (They record some twenty thousand hours of what Underhill reports to be generally some of the most profoundly dull videotape imaginable.) Why We Buy explains how consumer and retail marketing has gone from being a war to being a bar fight, an environment in which Coke is competing not only with Pepsi, but with every other product on promotional display.

The marketing tools the retail and package-goods industries have built over the past century no longer work as well as they used to. The gender models that have driven stores and designers have become increasingly obsolete; there is a reason why the Jeep Cherokee comes with a makeup mirror on the driver's side. With wry humor, Why We Buy looks at men trying to buy gifts in lingerie stores and women struggling for attention, service and respect in car dealerships and technology stores. It reveals how men are more promiscuous buyers and softer touches for children, as well as how a woman will spend even longer in the aisles if she is with a woman friend.

In Why We Buy, Underhill explains why we do what we do, notice what we notice, ignore what we ignore and buy what we buy. He tells us, for instance, why women won't linger to shop in narrow aisles, why the Internet cannot replace the shopping mail, how hardware stores are learning to adapt to women and how men are beginning to shop like women, how working women have altered the way supermarkets are laid out and why the person in charge at a branch bank sits at the desk farthest from the front door.

Paco Underhill's Why We Buy amuses and instructs, and it will change forever the way you look at stores and at yourself.

Average Customer Rating:

Great Insights	Customer Rating:
Nutshell review - This is a very interesting look into the psychology of why we buy (or not) by one of the original researchers into this field. A great book for the layman and will help you become more aware of the various ways in which we are being influenced to spend! A great read, well written and really fascinating.

Good book	Customer Rating:
I haven't finished reading this book, but have picked up some good ideas so far.

An eye-opening read for this consumer

Customer Rating:

I would think that most retailers could learn a huge amount about maximizing profits from this book. It was an eye-opening read for me. I am almost sorry that I am not a retailer so that I can't use this information. I wonder if the author has done any writing for professional journals. As others have noted, there isn't enough information on technique for anyone to really critique his methods. Still, though, that would be important mainly for an academician. The ideas themselves are what would be important to a retailer.

The Ultimate Guide to Understanding for Retailers Who Want to Better Understand In-Store Consumer Behavior

Customer Rating:

From store layout and design to how and why your customers behave the way they do in your store, this book reveals a ton of information that you can use to increase your sales. It also gives you advice on what changes you can make to help you make the buying experience easier and faster for your customers. In my marketing consulting practice I concentrate on "guerrilla marketing" strategies that retailers can use to quickly, easily and inexpensively increase their sales and reading this book is one of the ways. I recommend it to all my clients.

Its a good question to ask from evry customer

Customer Rating:

I had never thought upon this until I got this book in my hand. The information given in the book is based on practical studies conducted in different retail shops, departmental stores. Data gathered has been analyzed thoroughly and findings put in the book. The stuff is kind of hilarious and mind boggling. While you are reading the book you will take some time to think ..Is Paco talking about me? Paco for instance, discusses the implication of the trolley/baskets on the shopping experience, what happens if your shelves are oriented at an angle of 45 versus 90, what is the sales boost in having a merchandise displayed at the entry of the store versus in some middle section, A kid coming with his/her father is a better customer versus when he/she coming with mother and so on. Paco has touched base on very common things which can significantly change the shopping and sales. Check my blog for more [...]