Why We Buy

by Paco Underhill

  Quite a few malls and stores have added carts with definite kiddie clout. You get the basket on top, while your junior Dale Earnhardt gets to sit in a model racing car below.

  Earlier this year I was reviewing a new prototype Spar store in a train station in Milan, Italy. Spar is a European convenience store chain, like 7-Eleven in the U.S. You find them throughout Europe and in many emerging markets that were once European colonies. I was there with the president of Spar Italy. It was a good store. All across Europe, food-shopping in commuter train stations has taken a massive turn for the better. While the food offerings at Grand Central Station in New York are impressive and very high-end, and the small farmers’ markets that have attached themselves to the BART stations in the East Bay of greater San Francisco are a step in the right direction, the food offerings at the Gare du Nord in Paris, Helsinki’s Central Railway Station in Finland and almost any train station in Japan put their North American counterparts to shame. They’re good, affordable and generally fast. In a train station, however—unlike an airport, where we shop because we’re trapped—speed is critical. As a customer, your train is coming any minute, and you need to get in and out. But from the merchants’ standpoint, what’s important is to build the ticket or transaction. Thus, anyone shopping without a shopping bag can only buy so much.

  The president and I spent about an hour walking through the Milan Spar. As I say, I liked the place a lot. It had great vegetables, a juicing operation and a small bakery. Problem was, all of the baskets were clustered by the front door. He asked me what the store could do to increase performance. “Watch me,” I said. I grabbed three baskets and moved through the store. Each time I found someone with their arms full, I offered them a basket along with a nice smile. No one turned me down.

  There are moments in this business when you see the lightbulb flick on in people’s minds. You can kick around simple ideas all you want, but watching one happen in real time brings it all home. I’d seen the president smile over the course of the hour we’d spent together. But at that moment, for the first time I saw him grin.

  As the science of shopping evolves, my number-one worry is that as we fall further in love with technology—with that sensor on the shopping card, with the software package that hooks up to a store’s closed-circuit cameras—merchants get duped into believing that sitting behind a desk staring into a computer screen is an acceptable replacement to getting out on the floor and taking a good look.

  In a very successful bookstore near my office, a pile of shopping baskets sits in the usual erroneous place—in a corner just inside the door. Judging by where the baskets are kept, you’d think that retailers think that shoppers enter bookstores saying to themselves, “Well, today I plan on buying four books, a box of arty greeting cards and a magazine, and so first thing I will take a basket to hold all my purchases.” But common sense tells us that people don’t work that way—more likely somebody walks in thinking about one book, finds it, then stumbles over another that looks worthwhile. In such moments the very heart of retailing lies. For many stores, add-on and impulse sales mean the difference between black ink and red.

  Anyway, when our book shopper stumbles upon a second worthy volume, she then begins wishing she had a basket to make life a little easier. And if at that exact moment a basket suddenly materialized—in plain sight and easy to reach without stooping—then she would probably take one, and then, perhaps, go on to buy books number three and four. Maybe even a bookmark.

  The lesson seems clear: Baskets should be scattered throughout the store, wherever shoppers might need them. In fact, if all the stacks of baskets in America were simply moved from the front of the store to the rear they would be instantly more effective, since many shoppers don’t begin seriously considering merchandise until they’ve browsed a bit of it. The stack should be no lower than five feet tall, to make sure the baskets are visible to all, yes, but also to ensure that no shopper need bend down to get one, since shoppers hate bending, especially when their hands are full. A good, simple test on placement is that if you have to keep restocking a pile of baskets through the day, it’s probably in a good place.

  The baskets themselves also need to be rethought. This bookstore uses shallow, hard plastic ones with hinged steel handles, the same as supermarkets and convenience stores offer. They’re perfect if you’re buying bottles, jars or crushable items but make no sense for books, office supplies or clothes. When the contents grow heavy the handles become uncomfortable in your hand, but you can’t sling the basket over your arm or shoulder, as common sense might wish you could. As a result, you don’t want to let that basket get too full. How do we usually carry books? In bags, tote bags especially. A rack of canvas or nylon tote bags would be much better here and would have the added advantage itself of being salable merchandise. The clerk could unload the bag, total up the damages, ask if the customer wants to buy the tote and then reload everything and save on plastic to boot.

  The cleverest use of baskets I’ve seen yet is at Old Navy on Seventeenth Street in Manhattan. While the Old Navy chain has had its ups and downs, whoever manages this particular store does a great job. I take visiting retailers there—it’s one of the liveliest, most energetic shopping experiences in the city. As soon as you step inside there’s a gregarious, smiling employee greeting you and proffering a black mesh tote bag to carry your purchases. The bags are cheaper, lighter and easier to store than plastic baskets, and they look a whole lot better, too. In fact, when you bring yours to the checkout, the cashier will ask if you want to buy the bag, and a fair number of people say yes, adding one final sale at the last possible moment.

  The least clever use of baskets was one I witnessed in a Southern department store during the Christmas season. There was a large rack of mesh totes perfectly positioned just inside the entrance. But some merchandising wizard decided to place in front of it an even larger display of stuffed Santas—rendering the bags totally invisible to entering shoppers. (Exiting shoppers saw them just fine.) I don’t know how many Santas were sold, but it couldn’t have been enough to offset that bad decision.

  When we studied its stores, the dinnerware maker and retailer Pfaltzgraff was already providing baskets as well as shopping carts to its customers. But at the checkout, we noticed that many of the carts were filled to capacity with dishes and bowls and so on. The supersizing of grocery carts was a retail trend Pfaltzgraff hadn’t yet acknowledged. The company immediately replaced the carts with new ones that were roughly 40 percent larger. Just as fast, the average sales per customer rose.

  One of my favorite stores in the world is Vinçon, a design store in Barcelona, Spain. Every season they redesign their shopping bags. They are often funny, edgy and filled with social commentary. I am convinced that a high percentage of people shop there just to get hold of that season’s shopping bag. How many times walking through Chicago or New York City do you see American Girl Place bags? That shopping bag marching happily through a community is a billboard you don’t have to pay for.

  This all serves as a reminder of one of the most crucial big-picture issues in the world of retailing: You can’t know how much shoppers will buy until you’ve made the shopping experience as comfortable and easy and practical as possible.

  There’s a rather elaborate way of keeping customers’ hands free that I’d love to see some retailer try. This plan would keep shoppers feeling 100 percent unburdened until it is too late—after they’ve reached the exits.

  The idea would be to create a combination coat check/package-call system. Customers could unload all encumbrances as soon as they entered the store. And instead of carrying their selections around with them, they’d instruct sales clerks to dispatch the bags and boxes to the will-call desk near the exit. After a full session of vigorous, hands-free shopping, the customer would head for the door, pick up coat and hat and purchases, and be gone, into a car or taxi or waiting limousine.

  In 2006 we started working for the park division of t
he brewing giant Anheuser-Busch, which operates Busch Gardens and various SeaWorlds across America. In the parks where we worked, the company had a system at every gift store where you could send your purchases up ahead to the main store at the gate. Ride the Flume, get your picture taken (and stamped onto a mug), send it on, then jump aboard the next ride, hands free. Whee! In theory, you could make purchases throughout the park and pick them all up on your way out the door. The problem? Customers typically found out about this service only after they had bought something, and even then it wasn’t as clearly explained as it should have been. I wondered how many people moving through the park or browsing the gift stores didn’t understand this service—and decided not to buy something, because who wants a personalized beer mug on your lap when you’re riding the Tilt-A-Whirl? My point was that Anheuser-Busch needed to spell out this great service right at the park’s entrance.

  Sometimes even that might not be enough. A souvenir shop that we studied at Disneyland is still working on this problem. There, all day long the store is virtually empty, since visitors wisely don’t want to lug their purchases around the park all day. But by 4:30 p.m. it’s a madhouse of souvenir lust. A will-call desk was established so that shoppers could buy in the morning, leave the store empty-handed, and then drop by the will-call desk to retrieve their purchases at day’s end. The only problem is that a great many shoppers forget to come by for their purchases.

  My fullest vision of such a service was one I suggested to Bloomingdale’s. In the flagship store in Manhattan, the eighth floor is not terribly well suited to selling, due to its hard-to-reach location. So I suggested that the floor be turned into a kind of semiprivate retreat for better customers, complete with attended restrooms, ATMs, a café, a concierge, and other similar amenities—including, of course, the coat check/will-call desk. If shoppers are just visiting New York, delivery could even be made to their hotels. In fact, I envisioned that membership in this semiprivate club could be sold to hotels, which would then pass along the benefits to their guests. This kind of service would actually be most profitable on an even bigger scale. Someday soon a mall or shopping center developer will institute such a system to serve all tenants, doing his part to drive up sales—and, of course, his or her own take, too.

  It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of the hand issue to the world of shopping. A store can be the grooviest place ever, offering the finest/cheapest/sexiest goods to be had, but if the shopper can’t pick them up, it’s all for naught. Later I will explain the crucial matter of touch, trial and other sensory aspects of shopping. If shoppers can’t reach out and feel certain goods, they just won’t buy. So it’s not simply a matter of making sure shoppers can carry what they wish to take. They won’t even get close to making that decision if their hands are full. It’s why, in many cases, flat tabletop displays are better for showing apparel than hangers on racks: It’s a struggle to examine something on a hanger if you’ve only got one hand free, while you can place your burdens on the tabletop and unfurl that sweater to get a good, close look and feel.

  The most amusing manifestation of the hand issue was in a supermarket I visited. Like just about every retailer in America today, this market had decided to put in a coffee bar where shoppers could sit and drink if they wished. This wasn’t the first coffee shop I’d seen in a supermarket, but it was the first one to truly understand how the whole thing should work: It had also put in cup holders on the shopping carts, meaning that you could drink and drive. That clever little touch sells coffee, I’ll bet.

  FIVE

  How to Read a Sign

  Well,” he says to me, “what do you think?”

  And with that, the marketing executive unveils the sign that’s about to go into five hundred or so stores.

  I’m seated in a comfortable chair, in a climate-controlled conference room with perfect lighting. The sign is right in front of my nose, at the ideal viewing distance, beautifully printed on expensive paper, which has been exquisitely matted by professionals. There’s a kind of hush all over the room.

  “Gee,” I answer, “I don’t know what I think.”

  Worried glances all around. They’re not worried about me—they’re worried for me.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” the executive asks. “You’re supposed to know.”

  And that’s when I try to explain.

  I start by saying that unless every customer is going to come upon the sign, or more recently a flat-screen television display, under the exact same conditions that I first saw it, it’s impossible for me to know if it’s the greatest piece of communication ever designed or a tragic waste of time, space and money. I attempt to remind everybody that people in stores or restaurants or banks are almost never still; they’re moving from one place to another. And they’re not intent on looking at signs or flat screens—in fact, they’re usually doing something else entirely, like trying to find socks, or seeing which line is shortest, or deciding whether to have the burger or the chicken. And there’s that brand-new piece of communication, somewhere in the distance, off at a sharp angle, partially hidden by a tall man’s head, and the lighting isn’t so hot and there’s a little glare coming into the store, and anyway somebody’s talking to the customer and distracting her.

  In other words, I end by saying, showing me a sign in a conference room, while ideal from the graphic designer’s point of view, is the absolute worst way to see if it’s any good.

  To say whether a sign or any in-store media works or not, there’s only one way to really assess it—in place. On the floor of the store.

  Even there it’s no picnic. First you’ve got to measure how many people actually looked at it. Then you’ve got to be able to say whether they looked long enough to read what it says, because if they’re not reading it, even the best sign won’t work. Now, the difference between an inadvertent glance at a sign and a thorough reading might be two or three seconds. So you can see what kind of challenge this is for our researchers. They’ve got to discreetly position themselves just so, behind the sign itself, and then watch a shopper’s smallest eye movements while simultaneously keeping track of the stopwatch, just to be able to say with absolute scientific certainty that this man focused on that sign for four seconds, and then his eyes shifted to that poster and looked at it for four seconds. We watch shopper after shopper for hours on end, hundreds of people, thousands of minutes, and then assemble all our findings before we can say whether a sign is any good.

  Go try. It ain’t easy.

  But after thirty years of doing this work, we’re pretty confident about shooting from the hip, and most of the time we’re right. There are some basic rules about typefaces, colors and layout. And we’ve learned some things as well about how what we call “on-location communication” interacts with circulation in different environments. But to really measure the success or failure of a sign, we need to put some alphanumeric values to it—17 percent notice the sign; of those, 12 percent bother to read it; and the average viewing time is 2.9 seconds—and the only real way of doing that is to put the thing in place and watch it.

  There are companies that will measure sign readability by putting subjects into high-tech helmets that measure the smallest eyeball movements and holding signs before them. But even that won’t tell you if you’ve put the right sign in the wrong place, which happens all the time (and which, by the way, is actually worse than putting a so-so sign in the perfect place). And it surely can’t predict whether shoppers will read and respond to a sign on the floor of a store, where distractions abound.

  But back to our conference room. The most common mistake in the design and placement of signs and other message media is the thought that they’re going into a store. When we’re talking signs, it’s no longer a store. It’s a three-dimensional TV commercial. It’s a walk-in container for words and thoughts and messages and ideas.

  People step inside this container, and it tells them things. If everything’s working right, the t
hings they are told grab their attention and induce them to look and shop and buy and maybe return another day to shop and buy some more. They are told what they might buy, and where it is kept, and why they might buy it. They’re told what the merchandise can do for them and when and how it can do it.

  A great big three-dimensional walk-in TV commercial.

  And just as if scripting and directing a TV commercial, the job is to figure out what to say and when and how to say it.

  First you have to get your audience’s attention. Once you’ve done that, you have to present your message in a clear, logical fashion—the beginning, then the middle, then the ending. You have to deliver the information the way people absorb it, a bit at a time, a layer at a time, and in the proper sequence. If you don’t get their attention first, nothing that follows will register. If you tell too much too soon, you’ll overload them and they’ll give up. If you confuse them, they’ll ignore the message altogether.

  This has always been so. The main reason it’s so important today, as I mentioned earlier, is that more and more purchasing decisions are being made on the premises of the store itself. Customers have disposable income to spend and open minds, and they’re giving in to their impulses. The impact of brand-name marketing and traditional advertising is diffuse now because we all absorb so much of it. The role of merchandising has never been greater. Products now live or die by what happens on the selling floor. You can’t waste a chance to tell shoppers something you want them to know.