Rating: 
Summary: Interesting book for anyone who sells or buys something...
Review: I am not in retailing business but I still found this book very interesting and I got so many great ideas how to improve some of my favorite stores. It made me look the shopping from a completely different angle. I believe this book is a must for every shopkeeper, architect, designer, visualizer and so on.
Rating: 
Summary: Research-Based Insights
Review: Two kinds of people will really like this book. You'll like this book if you're responsible for the merchandising in a retail store anywhere. You'll also like this book if you're fascinated by human beings and how they act in their natural habitat. Why We Buy is as much an anthropological study as it is a business book. Paco Underhill describes what the title implies: Why We Buy. He looks at all of the elements that go into merchandising, such as the signage in a store, the width of the aisles, waiting times, and more. That might be enough, but he also will give you insights into different kinds of shoppers and the differences in the ways that men and women - as well as adults and children - shop. Along the way, you'll pick up interesting tidbits, such as the distinction between marketing and merchandising. To Underhill, marketing is increasing the number of people who come to the door with interest, while merchandising is everything you do after that and leads to selling on the floor. He has insights to share, based on his research, about both. This is an excellent book except for one part. The section on the Internet and Web are simply weak. They show a lack of understanding of the Web as a retail medium and of how the Web, catalog operations and physical stores will each function in the Digital Age. It seems to me like this section was inserted because "there has to be something about the Web." I would have preferred that Underhill either lavish the kind of attention and effort on Web selling that he so obviously has spent on physical stores, or had left the Net material out of this book all together. Even with that problem, this is an excellent book. If you're responsible for a retail store, this book is a "must read." If you're a customer, you may want to recommend it to the owners of stores where you shop especially the ones where you love the merchandise, but hate the shopping experience.
Rating:
Summary: A look at how (badly) many retailing decisions are made
Review: This book was an interesting peek inside how many decisions about shopping are made, and how the author changed that business in profound yet amazingly common sense ways, simply by watching what shoppers really do with the products, displays, aisle placement and packaging around them. The author's company used cameras and unobtrusive observer shoppers to see how frustrated shoppers would rip into packages to smell soaps or deodorizers, because the packaging left no way to sample them. Shoppers are inveterate samplers, touchers, sniffers and it was funny and illuminating to read about how we behave on the hunt. I'm not in advertising or retailing, but was very entertained by it all.
Rating: 
Summary: A must for anyone opening their own store
Review: There was definitely some really useful information in this book, and I learned some really cool things about how stores ought to be laid out. If I were opening up my own store I'd make sure to read this. I think a lot of stores need to be more deliberate about where they place items, info. they want read by consumers, racks, baskets, and chairs. It's all the obvious stuff in here that people just don't seem to think about. My local CVS could take the hint about putting baskets elsewhere in the store besides the very front. As Underhill points out, I don't know whether I'll need a basket until I'm in the middle of the store and have picked out a few things. And I'm more likely to buy more if my arms don't get filled up. I admit to not being able to go into a store now without analyzing it, but this book repeated itself an awful lot. I felt like the whole thing could have been condensed into an article, or might have been more fun if it was presented as a series of case studies. Just my .02.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile book on retail design
Review: It's interesting that Underhill's group was the one that advised Subway Sandwiches to print specific nutritional comparisons to other brand-name fast food items on their napkins. This was genius!
After reading this book, you will never enter a store or restaurant without examining its design and displays. Underhill describes the "zones" of a store or restaurant.
There's a time or two when Underhill gives contradictory opinions. One time, he says that computers should be displayed set up with their peripherals, ready to work, so that customers can try them out. But, another time, Underhill says customers want to see all similar $300 printers lined up together for comparison.
There are several things Underhill doesn't mention which are major sales inhibitors. Stores may have the best designed signage displaying the menu items or identifying aisles, and then put up large advertising banners a few feet in front of those signs, so that customers can't read the original signs without getting right under them. Many fast food outlets also neglect clearing and wiping tables. Yes, customers are expected to clear their own tables, but if they don't, the staff should promptly do so. Otherwise, the company spends millions in advertising to get customers into a restaurant, and the negligence of a manager chases the customer out. Many a time fast food customers will find napkins, straws and utensils stuffed into dispensers so tightly that it's near impossible to retrieve them.
Likewise, Underhill barely mentions the effects of employees' broken promises and faulty information. How many of us have shopped at a Orchard Supply-type hardware store, to have an employee promise to send someone to help you and never return? Or have an employee tell you they don't sell such an item in the store, and it turns out later they do? Frequently the reverse happens, when the employee swears the item can be found waaay across the store in aisle 3, where it doesn't exist.
Underhill says video stores should play movies suitable to all audiences, but it's often the case, especially later in the evening, that customers will have to shop under blaring rock music. In some stores, such as a mall Radio Shack I visited recently, the teen employees were engaged in such an animated conversation among themselves that customers didn't feel welcome to interrupt them, for the purposes of getting help or ringing up a purchase.
This book is worth reading. In reading the book, you'll see that some stores have incorporated his suggestions in the four years since publication.
Rating:
Summary: Loved it!
Review: Why We Buy brings to light the hows and whys of store set-up and design, I was intrigued right from page one. It gets into the psyche of shoppers by explaining why things are done the way they are and simple changes you can make to increase sales. They all make perfect sense! In understanding the psychology of consumers, one can increase sales by working together with the consumers' mind. After spending a whole semester studying consumer psychology, marketing and advertising, this is the book that I enjoyed the most. You will never look at the shopping experience the same way again.
Rating: 
Summary: Very basic common sense here
Review: I didn't get a heck of a lot out of this book. Telling me to put something at eye level in a store and it will sell better was just a waste of my time. I actually found all the examples rather juvenille and the research foolish.
Rating:
Summary: recommended but very few books are perfect . . .
Review: a book i definately recommend despite the criticisms to follow. an engaging and thought-provoking read but:
1. it could have shorter
2. there is a lot of self-promotion for the author's company that i could have done without.
Rating:
Summary: Very good spacial consumer behavior analysis
Review: This book is focused on the development of a body of knowledge in how consumers shop from a physical standpoint. The main research methodology is that of general urban anthropology, meaning that the author bases his findings on thousands of observations of consumers in stores and then tries to synthesize his findings. I found the book very useful in drawing attention to the importance of observation in determining store layout, and some of the main conclusions are very enlightning, such as suggestions on how the different shopping behaviors of men, women, children and the elderly affect the optimal layout of a store. Issues such as shelf height and location, corridor width, and customer profiling are dealt with in many different examples, giving the reader a good understanding of the methodology and the main lessons learned. Overall, I recommend this book to someone who is somehow responsible for a retail environment. The lessons are good, the book is written in an engaging manner, and the method of thinking (observational) is presented in a convincing manner. The tone of the author is sometimes a little arrogant, and for that reason I took off a star, but otherwise it is a very useful book.
Rating: 
Summary: SINCE WHEN IS RETAIL ROCKET SCIENCE? Puh-lease.
Review: I thought this was a clever and artfully written book that should not be treated as the scientific DOGMA that it has been taken for. The author's background and credentials are questionnable at best, and his research methodolgies are no-brainers, not to mention UNscientific. He is an "urban planner", "retail anthropologist" who has added "best selling author" to his list of titles. Make no mistake, THERE IS NO "SCIENCE" OF SHOPPING and Mr. Underhill is no retail rocket scientist.
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