Teaching stores all about shopping

PACO UNDERHILL is an anthropologist but he doesn't spend his time up the Amazon, he explores human behaviour on High Streets around the world. "I am a retail anthropologist and I stealthily make my way through stores tracking shoppers and noting everything they do," he says.

Underhill, who runs a New York-based consultancy called Envirosell, advises companies such as Levi Strauss, Gap, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Lloyds TSB on how, why and when consumers shop and how this information can be used to build sales.

"Retailers must accept the fact that there are no new customers - the population is not booming and we already have more stores than we need," he says. "If stores are to grow they need to get more out of existing customers - more visits, more time spent in them and more and biggerpurchases." He says that instant turnoffs for consumers include stupid questions from sales assistants, waiting and any form of poor service from the intimidating to the neglectful. He also says that retailers positioned next to banks are at a disadvantage because people tend to walk past banks as quickly as possible.

Consumers are put off too by the "bum brush "effect - a discovery he made while watching the tie department in Bloomingdale's department store in New York. "I noticed that customers would bend over to look at ties and then be jostled from behind by other shoppers. Women especially don't like being touched from behind." The ties were moved and sales went up dramatically, he says.

Men do not like hunting around for a fitting room - if they cannot see one available immediately then they generally will not bother. That is bad news for retailers because 65% of men who try something on buy it, compared with only 25% of women.

"It isn't rocket science," says Underhill, but people will shop more if they have their hands free. "People don't want to walk around stores in their winter coats loaded up with other shopping." A coat and shopping check-in centre where you can leave all your belongings and then shop unencumbered, makes great sense, he says.

But the biggest single thing that increases sales overnight is chairs.

"Chairs say we care and if men can sit in chairs and wait for women to shop, they will spend longer in a store and make more purchases," he says. "It is obvious but designers still screw up royally when it comes to seating."

Underhill recently visited London to assess how well British retailers are doing.

Marks & Spencer has one major problem he says: "It does not take credit cards. I watched lots of tourists spending time choosing things only to abandon them at the cash desk because they cannot use their credit cards.

They have to change that - they are losing easy money." He also says that London lacks really good food stores. "London is one of the best places to eat in the world and there is a real interest in food and cooking but there just aren't stores catering to that interest."

He believes a store based on the lines of New York's famous food emporium Dean & DeLuca, would do well.

Also, he says, retailers should examine the implications of our ageing population - by 2050 every third person on earth will be over 60.

Shelving will have to change so that shoppers do not have to bend down, signs will have to be in bigger type and cash machines will have to have easy-to-use buttons. "Stores, restaurants and banks will have to cater to the elderly because there will be lots of them and they will have enormous spending power," he says.

Why we buy: The science of shopping by Paco Underhill is published by Orion Business Books at GBP 18.99.

Copyright 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.