Call of the Mall : The Author of Why We Buy on the Geography of Shopping

Rating:
Summary: Engaging and fun to read....
Review: ....but perhaps a bit TOO casual. Paco Underhill follows up on his immensely successful "Why We Buy" with an anthropologist's tour of shopping malls and Americans' obsessions with them.

Underhill is worth his weight in gold to retailers; many of the simple ideas he throws away in this volume would be incredibly useful to shoppers and thus worth money to retailers (for example, clothes displayed shoulder-out on racks are annoying because you can't see what they look like from the front: why not angle them so they can be seen?)

He eventually takes on the longer-term topic of whether malls have a long-term future in the U.S., at least in their current configuration.

Underhill has adopted a casual conversational tone, as though he were chatting to you as his personal companion (or transcribing an audiotape of his thoughts), perhaps in order to make the book enjoyable to read. He succeeds at this readability goal, but the book seems somehwat insubstantial because of it: there's even one chapter that's only a page and a half long, on Aquamassage stores.

As much as I liked this book, I wish he cut some of this trivia out. Like a nosh at the food court, you end up wishing that you'd had a full meal.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging and fun to read....
Review: ....but perhaps a bit TOO casual. Paco Underhill follows up on his immensely successful "Why We Buy" with an anthropologist's tour of shopping malls and Americans' obsessions with them.

Underhill is worth his weight in gold to retailers; many of the simple ideas he throws away in this volume would be incredibly useful to shoppers and thus worth money to retailers (for example, clothes displayed shoulder-out on racks are annoying because you can't see what they look like from the front: why not angle them so they can be seen?)

He eventually takes on the longer-term topic of whether malls have a long-term future in the U.S., at least in their current configuration.

Underhill has adopted a casual conversational tone, as though he were chatting to you as his personal companion (or transcribing an audiotape of his thoughts), perhaps in order to make the book enjoyable to read. He succeeds at this readability goal, but the book seems somehwat insubstantial because of it: there's even one chapter that's only a page and a half long, on Aquamassage stores.

As much as I liked this book, I wish he cut some of this trivia out. Like a nosh at the food court, you end up wishing that you'd had a full meal.

Rating:
Summary: Get a tour of shopping malls by an expert
Review: An enjoyable read without many numbers or detailed economic concepts to bog it down. This is not a book I plowed right through as a "can't put it down"; but rather the well-organized groupings of concepts and ideas let me read chapters at my leisure.

You'll learn about the growth and history of the mall, how it works, how it doesn't work, and the mall's future. This book touches not only on the stores, but also human behavior. You'll feel as if you're walking in the malls at Paco Underhill's side as he expands on the workings of the stores and the habits of shoppers.

Rating:
Summary: the play-by-play of a trip to the mall. ooooooh.
Review: First off, I thought "Why We Buy" was a great book. It was fun, entertaining and tremendously educational. The sequel just doesn't live up to the same standards. It's a a play-by-play of a trapse through the mall. Sure, you pick up some interesting tidbits here and there, but I thought the most engaging parts were when he restated parts from the previous book. It's a quick and easy read, you pick up a few things here and there, but I wouldn't say it's a "must read" by any means. Wait for the paperback or borrow it from the library. It's not one you need to keep on your shelves.

Rating:
Summary: Generally weak and somewhat scattered..
Review: I have not read his first book, but was definitely disappointed with this work. It is an incredibly interesting and valid subject, and yet, Underhill merely superficially skims over the surface of it, with long transcripts of conversation and a barely discernible thesis which tends to meander as a chapter deals with a new subject related to malls.

Essentially, it is hard to know who Underhill is targeting with this work. Is he encouraging consumers to deconstruct mall environments, or illustrating how retailers and developers could improve profit by altering the layout and make up of malls? I get the impression it is the latter, and perhaps this is the reason that the book fails to stimulate, because only a small portion of its readership is likely to be developers/retailers. For this reason, 'The Call of the Mall' reads like an incredibly casual example of the reports he does for companies at good 'ole Envirosell.

Undoubtedly, 'The Call of the Mall' would be better written by an academic. I supposed I wanted cold hard facts, rather than Underhill's subjective observations, irrespective of his footing in retail study. And often, these observations seem somewhat naive and American-centric, particularly in the chapter relating to malls across the world.

Another thing that began to grate on my nerves was Underhill's obvious high esteem for himself and his own talent and wealth. While he balances this with a semblance of humour, it does get annoying. I particularly adored the discussion of a particular Japanese mall, which is near the 'Imperial Hotel' where 'he stays.' Is this meant to be relevant to the narrative or the purpose of the work? I think not. The book is teeming with these kind of discrete but encoded messages.

Overall, a focusless and somewhat boring work, that could have been great with a discernible direction and depth, some actual quantitive facts and less of an emphasis on Underhill's own subjectivities.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointing second book
Review: I very much enjoyed Paco Underhill's first book about shopping, _Why_We_Buy_. Therefore, I was looking forward to this new effort with a great deal of anticipation, most of which was disappointed. Somewhere in this book is approximately one essay worth of interesting material; unfortunately, it's smeared all over a longer book that doesn't really stand up to the material.

I really wanted to like this book, but I did not. If you haven't read the first book, skip this one, and read that one. it was a great book. This was a waste of my time.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and good advice, too
Review: I work in a retail-related business, so part of my interest in this is professional. For that purpose this was an extremely useful book, an eye-opening examination of how exactly consumers and malls coexist. I'll make actual changes in how I do my job as a result of reading it. But as a former mall rat myself, I also found it to be a terrific, entertaining, sometimes even funny read. Underhill has a smooth and absorbing way of telling his stories, and he's saying things about malls here that no one, to my knowledge, has ever said. Highly recommended, especially for anyone in retail or store design.

Rating:
Summary: The Pall of the Mall
Review: Maybe you are one of those people who loves to spend time at the mall, but there are an awful lot of us who have mixed feelings about shopping and malls. Paco Underhill, who seems to be a mall-lover, speaks to both enthusiastic and reluctant shoppers alike.

This book was originally subtitled A Walking Tour Through the Crossroads of Our Shopping Culture, which is more descriptive than The Author of Why We Buy on the Geography of Shopping. Underhill takes us on a walk through the mall, visiting malls throughout the world, and taking a look at some of the neglected areas of the mall. He brings along different specialists, such as an architect, a visual merchandiser (which used to be called a window dresser, but is now much more than that), and a teenage shopper. He and his guests deconstruct the mall and the mall experience. The tone of the book is conversational and amusing.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the mall is how relatively unplanned it all is. I suppose I thought that every aspect of the mall would have been studied and designed for maximum profit, but Underhill reveals that this is not the case.
The parking lot is haphazard, the restrooms are almost afterthoughts, the mall map is useless, the lighting is inadequate, the outside appearance and entrance are uninspired.

You know how you never see a clock in a mall? I thought that was deliberate, like in the casinos, where you are encouraged to leave the real world behind and forget about mundane things like whether it is day or night. After reading The Call of the Mall, I can safely assume it is not deliberate, just something the designers never even thought of.

Rating:
Summary: For the shopper and retailer alike
Review: Much like Paco Underhill's first book, Why We Buy, this book states what seems so obvious, but really isn't until he talks about it. I must say that my only complaint about the book is that it starts out pretty slow. Even though the first couple of chapters are short, if I didn't have the faith that the rest of the book was going to be worth it, or hadn't read Why We Buy, I doubt that I would have had the persistence to endure the slow beginning.

However, that said, once he starts making certain observations and recommendations, the points are one after another and I found myself needing to highlight almost entire passages or would skim over a passage and find myself needing to go back and read because I would miss the significance of certain passages. At this point, Paco Underhill is at his best. He also shops with various other folks to emphasize the socializing aspect of the mall as the "new town square" that only suburbia is able to provide.

Reading it from a retailer perspective, this book was so full of little tidbits and advice, I found the time spent reading it as worthwhile as any book I have read for purely a work related purpose.

I do not want to give too much of the book away but some of the issues covered are parking in the malls, the location of the malls, the maps in malls, the location of certain departments in department stores or individual stores in the mall and how they fail or succeed in various marketing methods.

I would recommend this book to those who need to see their stores (or mall) with "fresh eyes" but also to anyone interested in the phenomenon of shopping itself.

Rating:
Summary: Not A Second Too Soon
Review: One someimes looks on with trepidation when we hear of a sequel. While I initially felt that way about Call of thh Mall, that feeeling was quickly dispelled as I became engaged in Paco Underhill's latest work. It is an enticing and thoughtful survey of not only current retail trends, but a statement about society. Call of the Mall is very much in the spirit of William Whyte, one of the folks who had a large influence on Underhill's approach.

The informal style is deceptive at first, then you become increasingly engrossed by what you're reading. The discussion of the role of the mall, the history and future of the mall as well as numerous examples international examples all made for reading that educated and entertained. A must read for the student of retail and American culture.

Call of the Mall so piqued my interest that I also purchased and read James Farrel's One Nation Under Goods. It is a good complement to Underhill's lastest success!