A good solution might be found, say, at a Harley-Davidson dealer. The company could call its skin-care line whatever they wanted—sun shield, windburn care or human leather conditioner. The important thing is that they give it open-road, fuss-free value, plus a name that sounds like burly shorthand. Like Goop, which gets the grease off your hands, or Lava soap, which takes care of pine sap, it should be marketed as killer guy stuff. If Harley leads, John Deere and Caterpillar might follow, and a real step toward preventing skin cancer will have been made.
Clinique makes a complete line of shaving and skin products for men. But at the very sophisticated Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City, a man has to visit the all-female cosmetics bazaar on the ground floor to find the stuff. It’s not even available at the men’s store across Fifth Avenue. Who would guess that the shaving cream is right next to the lipstick? I’ve no doubt that many women buy shaving products for their men, but that’s the old-fashioned approach, not the way of the future. Gillette makes shaving creams for a variety of skin types, and there’s no doubt that it’s for men. But how is a man supposed to know which type of skin he has? A simple wall chart display would do the trick, but I’ve yet to see one. I recently visited a national chain’s drugstore in Manhattan’s Chelsea section, the epicenter of gay life here. Even this store shortchanges men—their section (which consisted only of deodorant, a few hair-grooming products, some Old Spice, a tube of Brylcreem) was jammed into a corner shelf between the film-processing booth and the disposable razors. This store would be a perfect place to create a prototype men’s section. Instead, it was the same old dreariness.
Giving men their own products, and a place to buy them, would be a good start. But that still smacks of the health, beauty and cosmetics section designed for women. Someone needs to start from scratch in designing a “men’s health” department, where you’d find skin products, grooming aids, shaving equipment, shampoo and conditioner, fragrance, condoms, muscle-pain treatments, over-the-counter drugs and the vitamins, supplements and herbal remedies for ailments that afflict men as well as women. There might also be some athletic wear, like socks, T-shirts, supporters, elastic bandages and so on. There should also be a display of books and magazines on health, fitness and appearance. The section itself would have a masculine feeling, from the fixtures to the package designs. And it would be merchandised with men in mind—the signs would be big and prominent, and everything would be easy to find. The number-one magazine success story of the past decade has been the amazing growth of a periodical called Men’s Health, which sells over 1.5 million copies a month, more than GQ, Esquire, Men’s Journal and all the others. If the magazine can thrive, why not the store section, too?
NINE
What Women Want
Before this chapter begins, may I take a moment to mark the passing of a great American institution and one of the last true bastions (if not actual hideouts) of postwar masculinity?
I’m speaking, of course, of Joe’s Hardware. Or was it Jim’s? Doesn’t matter—you know the place. Creaky planks on the floor. Weird smell of rubber and four-in-one oil in the air. Big wooden bin of ten-penny nails. Twine. Elbow joints. Mystic tape. Spools of copper wire. Drums of waterproof sealant. Brads. Brads? Hell, brads, tacks, staples, washers, nuts, bolts (molly and otherwise), pins, sleeves, brackets, housings, flanges, hinges, gaskets, shims, wood screws, sheet metal screws, a calendar featuring Miss Snap-on Tools in a belly shirt brandishing killer cleavage and a power router, and over there—atop the rickety ladder, chewing a bad cheroot, rummaging blindly in an ancient box of two-prong plugs, cursing genially under his stogie breath—Joe himself. I mean Jim.
Whatever happened to him? Dead. How about his store? Dead.
Who killed them? Who do you think?
Oh, those…women! Too fancy to shop at Joe’s, am I right? Poor guy stocked everything you could want, but it just wasn’t enough. Not the right color. Not enough styles. The place stinks like cheap cigars.
Bye, Joe.
It’s no surprise that women are capable of causing such tectonic shifts in the world of shopping. Shopping is still and always will be meant mostly for females. Shopping is female. When men shop, they are engaging in what is inherently a female activity. (When a man shops he’s practically in drag.) And so, women are capable of consigning entire species of retailer or product to Darwin’s dustbin, if that retailer or product is unable to adapt to what women need and want. It’s like watching dinosaurs die out.
Need more evidence? Two words: sewing machine.
In the ’50s, I am told, 75 percent of American households owned sewing machines. Today, it’s under 5 percent. So roll over, Joe—here comes Mr. Singer. (In fact, the sewing machine giant has gone into the military weaponry business.) Women once made entire wardrobes for themselves and their families, and kept repairing garments until they had truly earned their rest. Then the past three decades of socioeconomic upheaval happened and women stopped sewing anything more ambitious than a loose button.
One last illustration?
Paper grocery store coupons.
Gone. Whoosh! In 2007, less than 3 percent of all manufacturers’ coupons distributed via newspapers, magazines or in the mail were ever redeemed (in response, the coupon industry is making a valiant attempt to move the coupon distribution business online). Women’s lives have changed, and the thought of sitting hunched over the kitchen table scissoring away at the Daily Bugle suddenly seems as cost-effective as churning your own butter. Oh, there are some pockets of coupon-clipping resistance—senior citizens, the highly budget-conscious and motivated, mostly women who aren’t working at jobs all day. But otherwise—outtahere!
Of course, we’re all familiar with how men have become better, more caring, more sensitive shoppers, willing to shoulder some of the burden even of mundane household acquisitioning and provisioning. But let’s not forget that this reformation came about in large part because of gentle prompting (if not actual violent pushing and shoving) by women. And let’s keep in mind also that while the future of retailing will undoubtedly show the effects of more male energy in the marketplace, for the most part the big shifts will continue to reflect changes in the lives and tastes of women.
But what, as marketing genius Sigmund Freud was moved to ask, do women want from shopping? We speak a great deal of the distinct differences between how men and women behave in stores, but rather than dish out generalizations, let me start with a good example. It’s from a study we did for an Italian supermarket chain, and it comes directly from a video camera we trained on the meat counter.
There, we watched a middle-aged woman approach and begin picking up and examining packages of ground meat. She did so methodically, carefully, one by one. As she shopped a man strode up and, with his hands behind his back, stood gazing over the selection. After a brief moment he chose a package, dropped it into his cart, and sped away. The woman continued going through meat. Then came a couple with a baby. The wife hung back by the stroller while her husband picked up a package, gave it a quick once-over, and brought it back to their cart. His wife inspected it and shook her head. He returned it, chose another, and brought it back to their cart. His wife inspected it and shook her head. He chose again. She shook again. Exasperated, she left him by the stroller and got the meat herself. As they walked off, the first woman was making her way through the final package of meat on display. Satisfied with her research, she took the first one she had examined, placed it in her cart, and moved on. My sister complains that her husband goes out of his way to buy tired vegetables. “He doesn’t get it. We want to eat fresh ones, not adopt the sad ones.”
What makes women such heroic shoppers? The nature-over-nurture types posit that the prehistoric role of women as homebound gatherers of roots, nuts and berries rather than roaming hunters of woolly mammoths proves a biological inclination toward skillful shopping. The nurture-over-nature fans argue that for centuries, the all-powerful patriarchy kept women in the house a
nd out of the world of commerce, except as consumers at the retail level.
This much is certain: Shopping was what got the housewife out of the house. Under the old division of labor, the job of acquisitioning fell mainly to women, who did it willingly, ably, systematically. It was (and in many parts of the world, remains) women’s main realm of public life. If, as individuals, they had little influence in the world of business, in the marketplace they collectively called the shots. Shopping gave women a good excuse to sally forth, sometimes even in blissful solitude, beyond the clutches of family. It afforded an activity that lent itself to socializing with other adults, clerks and store owners and fellow shoppers.
As women’s lives change, though, their relationship to shopping must evolve. Today, most American women hold jobs, and so they get all the impersonal, businesslike contact with other adults they want (and then some). They also get plenty of time away from the comforts of home. And so the routine shopping trip is no longer the great escape. It’s now something that must be crammed into the tight spaces between job and commute and home life and sleep. It’s something to be rushed through over a lunch hour, or on the way home, or at night. The convenience store industry is a direct beneficiary of how women’s lives have changed—instead of a highly organized weekly trip to the supermarket, with detailed list in hand, women now discover at nine p.m. that they’re out of milk or bread for tomorrow’s lunches, prompting a moonlit run to the 7-Eleven. Catalogs, TV shopping channels and web shopping all have flourished thanks mainly to the changes in women’s responsibilities. And the less time women spend in stores, the less they buy there, plain and simple. As they hand over some of their traditional duties (cooking, cleaning, laundry, child care) to men, they also relinquish control over the shopping for food, soap and kiddie clothes. Women may even become more male in their shopping habits—hurried hit-and-run artists instead of dedicated browsers and searchers. Right off the bat, the advantages of the postfeminist world to retailers (women have more money) are offset by some disadvantages (women have less time and inclination to spend it in stores).
The use of shopping as a social activity seems unchanged, however. Women still like to shop with friends, egging each other on and rescuing each other from ill-advised purchases. I don’t think we’ll ever see two men set off on a day of hunting for the perfect bathing suit. All our studies show that when two women shop together, they spend more time and money than women alone. They certainly outshop and outspend women saddled with male companions. Two women in a store is a shopping machine, and wise retailers do whatever they can to encourage this behavior—promotions such as “bring a friend, get a discount,” or seating areas just outside the dressing room to allow for more relaxed try-ons and assessments. Stores with cafés on the premises allow women to shop, then take a break, without ever leaving sight of the selling floor.
When you’ve observed as many shoppers as I have, you realize that for many women there are psychological and emotional aspects to shopping that are just plain absent in most men. Women can go into a kind of reverie when they shop—they become absorbed in the ritual of seeking and comparing, of imagining and envisioning merchandise in use. They then coolly tally up the pros and cons of this purchase over that, and once they’ve found what they want at the proper price, they buy it. Women generally care that they do well in even the smallest act of purchasing and take pride in their ability to select the perfect thing, whether it’s a cantaloupe or a house or a husband. In fact, watch men and women in the produce section—the man breezes through, picks up the head of lettuce on top of the pile and wheels away, failing to notice the brown spots and limpid leaves, while the woman palpates, examines and sniffs her way past the garbage, looking for lettuce perfection. He’ll even fail to notice how much the lettuce costs, something almost unthinkable among women. Men do take pride in their proficiency with certain durable goods—cars, tools, boats, barbecue grills, computers. Women, though, have traditionally understood the importance of the impermanent world—cooking a meal, decorating a cake, fixing hair and makeup.
Not that there’s anything superficial about the female relationship with consumption. In fact, it’s women, not men, who plumb the metaphysics of shopping—they illuminate how we human beings go through life searching, examining, questioning and acquiring and assuming and absorbing the best of what we see. At that exalted level, shopping is a transforming experience, a method of becoming a newer, perhaps even slightly improved person. The products you buy turn you into that other, idealized version of yourself: That dress makes you beautiful, this lipstick makes you kissable, that lamp turns your house into an elegant showplace.
In practical terms, this all means one patently obvious, overarching thing: Women demand more of shopping environments than men do. Males just want places that allow them to find what they need with a minimum of looking and then get out fast. If a male is made to wander and seek—in other words, to shop—he’s likely to give up in frustration and exit. Men take less pleasure in the journey. Women are more patient and inquisitive, completely at ease in a space that gradually reveals itself. Therefore, they need environments where they can spend time and move about comfortably at their own speed in what sometimes resembles a semitrance state. Our most famous discovery, the “butt-brush factor,” indicates to us that women have an actual aversion to examining anything much below waist level, for fear of being jostled from the rear. This takes in quite a bit of American retailing’s selling space. You can’t ask a woman (or a man) to bend over and expect that she’s going to feel comfortable for more than a moment or two. You can’t crowd a woman and think that she’s going to linger. Watch shoppers’ faces in busy aisles—once they’ve been bumped a few times they begin to look annoyed. And irritated shoppers do not tarry; in fact, they frequently leave before buying what they came for. Retailers must keep all this in mind when deciding where to sell what.
It’s equally true that women can and will steel themselves for a sale they know will be crowded. They’ll shop at Filene’s Basement in Boston and the Barneys Warehouse Sale, and their hunger for bargains will overcome whatever issues they have with strangers piercing their body bubbles. What we’ve noted over the years is that a woman’s butt-brush radar is also calibrated to respond differently to other females than unfamiliar males. In most of the crowded places where women wade fearlessly, they’re jostled, pulled and yanked not by men but by other women.
For instance, department store cosmetics sections require women to sit or stand in one spot while makeup is demonstrated, which can be a problem during busy times. Over and over, our research has shown that women standing at the corner of a counter, where they can wrap themselves around the angle and nestle in a little bit, actually buy at a higher rate than women standing a few feet away along the main stretch of the counter. Some cosmetics departments use counters to create cul-de-sacs, recessed areas that allow shoppers to stand clear of passing foot traffic and browse without fear—we call them catchment basins, and they are successful at inducing women to shop a little longer. As discussed earlier, drugstores sometimes stock unglamorous products such as concealer cream at the very bottom of a wall display—meaning that older women, the shoppers least likely to appreciate having to stoop, are forced to bend low and stick their butts out where they’d rather not go. As a result, less concealer will be sold than if it was positioned higher.
Women’s spatial requirements can be seen everywhere in retailing. Airport gift shops, for instance, are typically divided into the “grab and go” zone—near the register, where you dart in for a paper or gum, pay and run—and the “dwell” zone, farther into the store, where gift items are usually displayed. Our research shows that women in these stores gravitate away from the hubbub around the counter and toward the dwell zone, where they feel protected from foot traffic. Many of these stores’ architecture features little nooks and crannies created by shelving and racks—perfect cul-de-sacs for uninterrupted shopping. That’s how women prefer
to shop: within view of the main flow of traffic, but sheltered in sectioned-off areas.
The butt sensitivity of women also establishes a relationship between store design and typeface: The narrower the quarters, the less time a woman will spend there, so the clearer and more direct signs and other merchandising materials must be. All print must be big and high contrast; designers of shampoo bottles, for instance, or any products sold in the close quarters of a chain drugstore, have to heed this reality. We’ve studied many drugstore health and beauty departments and the result is always the same—women like to study products before they buy, especially if the product is new on the market. In one study, we saw that 91 percent of all drugstore buyers read the front of a package, 42 percent read the back and 8 percent read the sides. Sixty-three percent of women who bought something read at least one product package. So there’s a clear connection between reading and buying. And reading takes time. And time requires space. Here’s the breakdown from our compiled database; times are for how long women who made purchases read the packaging first:
Facial cleaners: 13 seconds
Moisturizers: 16 seconds
Hand and body soap: 11 seconds
Shower gel: 5 seconds
Sun care: 11 seconds
Acne medications: 13 seconds
But if women don’t feel comfortable, they won’t pause for two seconds, and they certainly won’t buy any of the products that require a little study. Retailers should walk every foot of selling space asking this question: Can I stand here and shop without being jostled from behind? Any place where the answer is no is no place for merchandise requiring a careful look.
Why We Buy Page 14
