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Summary: Buy this and find out why you did!
Review: Buy this and find out why you did!
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Summary: wow! I never knew that
Review: What an awesome book, I am a retail manager who' marketing just wasn't working till I read this book, peoples behaviour and reasons to buy total took me off guard, after reading this book I changed my store to suit the customer and made a profit. If you are a shopper or in retail this book is an eye opener, and the humor wiil get you thinking, 'do I do that'.
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Summary: Very Educational
Review: You'll learn a lot of little interesting things from this book. Definitely worth the money and the time to read. However, the utility of this book was greatly decreased by its poor organization. Just another sea of dense, unformatted text.
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Summary: Why we buy
Review: This book contains some useful & practical info. However, the writer can provide the same info yet cut the no. of pages into half. The latter part is somewhat redundant and recapitulation of the info the author re-iterated earlier.
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Summary: How we buy: the mechanics of shopping
Review: Anthropologist goes to supermarket instead of Samoa, and observes strange, hilarious, and many times unexpected habits of the supermarket people. How many men come to a supermarket with a shopping list ? How do old and young differ in buying hair-coloring stuff ? What percentage of people actually buy something ? What do husbands do while their wives are shopping ? How do people with babystrollers shop ? Underhill studies those aspects of shopping which cannot be uncovered from the bottom line. He actually observes the mechanics of shopping: how many scarves do women touch, do they check price tags, how long does it take to make the purchasing decision ? He does not bother with average sales size: that is simply available from cash register data. The book is a combination of methodology for studying shopping, results, anecdotes and self-appraisal. Underhill seems to have a huge bag of stories to tell, but some of them seem so dear to him that he keeps repeating them up to three times, like "put computer, business and sports books together, and cookbooks, health, home and self-help books together" ("Guess which sex is buying which ?" asks Underhill even though he has already given the answer earlier in the book). The repetition makes the book boring towards the end, and a 200-page version would get 5 stars from me.
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Summary: Packed With Knowledge!
Review: In Why We Buy, Paco Underhill reveals key principles that he and his company, Envirosell, have learned about shopping. He discusses what different types of customers see, and how they respond. He has more than 20 years experience observing some 50,000 to 70,000 shoppers a year in stores, banks, and public offices. This is an exciting, original book. It is sharply written, with a dynamic style. Underhill provides generous examples of what he and his team of trackers have learned by observing shoppers. He includes interesting anecdotes and statistics showing how shoppers behave under different circumstances. This is both a solid, carefully researched book and a joy to read. We [...] recommend the book to everyone in retail.
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Summary: Interesting read, but not enough detail
Review: From start to finish, Why We Buy is very interesting read. Underhill goes over the behaviors people exhibit while they are shopping and points out how retailers do things both correctly and incorrectly. His conclusions are based on years of observational research.The book is written in a light, conversational manner that makes it a quick, easy read. However, it excludes an enormous amount of detail about Underhill's research. The book makes references to his research over the years, but does it at such a high level that it is difficult to fully buy into his argument. I want to believe what he says, but he just doesn't provide the necessary level of detail. He also seems to draw conclusions that just can't be made (based on the information he presents). For example, he will relate a story of how a particular rack was being used in a store and then say "obviously it should have been placed like this.. and after the store took my recommendation the items on the rack sold much better...". He doesn't account for other factors that could have caused better performance -- such as seasonal effects, etc. One could assume he controlled for all of these things, but it isn't stated in his discussion. Also, he tends to go on rants about the way stores should be and offers all kinds of suggestions about his view of the world. Great.. amusing at first, but they get a little tiring. Finally, I don't agree with his assessment of online shopping (note, I am biased on this one). He takes his observations about shopping and applies them to the online environment when it isn't clear this is a reasonable thing to do. Some of his points are good, but in general they are very near sighted. All criticism aside, I think Why We Buy is a worthwhile read. Just set your "suspension of disbelief" threshold higher while you are reading it.
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Summary: Detailed and well written
Review: Why we buy is one of the best books on marketing and sales I have ever read. Even if you don't hav much to do with mass market or stores, you can learn different ways of the way to present a product to your customers. Understand the different habits of women and men, the fact that the purcharsing process is not analytical but emotional are lessons you can apply to your everyday selling, no matter if you are in one-to-one sales or retail. In one word, the book is superb!
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Summary: Interesting at first, but then becomes tedious to read.
Review: This book explores the psychology, sociology, and ergonomics of shopping and retail display in depth. During the first several chapters of this book I was fascinated by some of the facts and anecdotal stories that the author presented. This fascination lasted for about half the book however. As the book progresses the author drifts from his presentation of the science of shopping to his endless, but often unsupported, suggestions on how shipping can be improved. The early chapters contain more descriptions of actual studies on shopping that Underhill's consulting firm has done. Whether you're a casual shopper or the owner of a retail store, these chapters are loaded with useful information. The author explains how simple changes to product display or packaging can make dramatics changes in the volume of product purchased. In the later chapters, it almost seems as though the author has run out of material. Instead of describing actual case studies, the author goes on a length with his personal opinions on how shopping could be improved today and how it will change in the future. Some of his suggestion seemed pretty wild. Designer toilet paper?? Other suggestions he makes just don't seem to be reasonable to me as a consumer. Example: He suggests that computer stores don't put all of the software, printers, monitors, etc in separate sections but rather disperse them throughout the store. I don't know about Mr. Underhill, but when I go out to buy a monitor or printer, I want to see them all side-by-side so I can compare them. I don't want to run around the store trying to find them all. He has countless similar suggestions that seem dubious to me and are not backed up by any of his research. His predictions for the future also seem rather odd. Example: As baby boomers age we'll see companies like Harley Davidson making sporty wheelchairs so upscale boomers can transition from their Harley cycles to their Harley wheelchairs. It is clear that the author is not thrilled about online shopping. Although some of his suggestion for how to change it indicates that he has not had much experience with it. He recommends that sites do things that they are actually doing today. Example: Why can't we order groceries online? - You can in most major cities Mr. Underhill. If you're in the retail business, you can probably learn a lot from this book despite the negatives I mentioned. I'd recommend it for anyone in this line of business. If you're just looking for an interesting book about shopping, I think that you too will have mixed feelings. It starts out interesting, but soon becomes tedious to read. This a review of the unabridged Audible.com version of this book (downloadable audio). This is an excellent audio version and the reader was one of the best I've heard.
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Summary: Tactics that separate you from your money revealed
Review: WHY WE BUY should be required reading for anyone enrolled in Marketing 101, and recommended reading for anyone who has disposable income. Author Paco Underhill, the founder of a research and consulting firm that advises businesses on how to boost sales, has written an engaging revelation on the ways vendors can design their merchandising operations and locations to better relieve you of your fluid assets. (It's not quite as cynical as I've made it sound, because, after all, shoppers are willing participants in the retail dance. We all like to acquire Stuff.) Underhill covers a lot of ground, most of which shoppers rarely notice or consider: the placement of signage, the width of shopping aisles, the height of shelving, the importance of having two hands free, the shopping habits of men vs. those of women, the influence of kids, the critical importance of the five senses in evaluating goods, buying habits of the youthful vs. the aged, the point size of type on packaging, traffic flow patterns within stores, the location of the cash/wrap stations, the placement of promotional materials, the advantages/disadvantages of Web selling, and more. The subject matter could've made Underhill's narrative, however informative, also as dry as peanut butter-covered graham crackers without milk. Happily, the author exhibits a wry sense of humor that makes WHY WE BUY worthy of casual reading. Two examples follow to give you the flavor of it. When discussing the reinvention of certain household products so as to appeal to men: "The manliest monikers used to go on cars; now they go on suds. A very successful soap introduction in the '90s wasn't anything frilly or lavender. It was Lever 2000, a name that would also sound right on a computer or a new line of power tools. I'd drive a Lever 2000 any day." Regarding the absence of seating for the use of menfolk while their ladies shop in a certain apparel store, and the male solution: " ... they gravitated toward a large window that had a broad sill at roughly the height where a bench would be. And where exactly was this ad hoc bench? ... It was immediately adjacent to a large and attractive display of the Wonderbra ... On the day we visited the store, there were two elderly gents loitering there, unabashedly discussing the need for Wonderbras of every woman who was brave enough to stop and shop. Did I mention that few Wonderbras were purchased there that day?" I doubt if having read this book will raise my awareness of the subtle stratagems by which retailers hope to have the opportunity to swipe my plastic, but it was worth a chuckle nevertheless.
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