Shopping by Paco Underhill

Shopping Reviews

• 
  Anina

  This is a pretty neat book. The guy who wrote it is a professional who observes people in malls and then develops marketing strategies. It was more about sociology, about how people act in malls, than it was about evil marketing strategies. It was very interesting to see all that goes into malls and the psychological reactions people have. The chapters are short and easy to read, not too science-y.
• 
  Hank Stuever

  Pretty essential reading for anyone who wants to do some deep thinking (or writing) about our shopaholic culture and the temples we built to it. Not a social harangue; mostly anecdotal anthropology. Some of it seems obvious and a lot of it revealing in a new way.
• 
  Kelsey

  Given to me by my boss at a customer experience consulting firm. Underhill has some great, if not obvious, insights. He writes well and knows how to tell a story which, for an academic/consultant, is not always a given. I read the book all the way through and agreed with most of it, though I bristled with some of the generalizations (mostly those having to do with gender). A good read for anyone who is iterested in malls as public spaces.
• 
  Joanne

  Since I loved {book: Why We Buy] so much, I was looking forward to another from Underhill. But this one just isn't as interesting. A lot of history of the shopping mall and commentary on it as a social phenomenon. The book is best when Underhill takes along fellow shoppers (three teens, a middle-aged man) and just lets the tape run. The rest is a bit of a yawn.
  
  
• 
  Jenn

  I was hoping this book have some insight like the chapter on malls in Douglas Rushkoff's Coercion or Naomi Klein's discussion of malls as private vs public space in No Logo. No such luck. The author makes some good observations about the development of malls and people's behavior in them, but doesn't seem interested in thoughtful discussion. Instead he uses his data to make sweeping generalizations based on gender, age, and income. I found his tone to be completely condescending, especially in his explanations of how and why women shop. I'm a woman, and I do shop in malls, but I don't identify with any of his explanations of how women shop. It seems he ignores any behavior that doesn't fit into the boxes of his preconceived ideas. There are many shoppers that don't fit into his ideal molds, but he is unconcerned with looking at anything other than the status quo.
  
  The way the book was written also became annoying really fast. He has several 'conversations' with random mall shoppers, all of whom fit his stereotypes of shoppers and mall staff. All of these characters just serve to echo his own ideas back to him, and I guess are supposed to reinforce the ideas in the reader's mind as being true. It all sounded phony and forced. Just as annoying are his ideas of what malls SHOULD be like. A lot of his ideas seemed impractical and don't convey an understanding of the social and psychological function of malls as they presently exist.
• 
  Svalbard

  Se si riesce a passare sopra l’ormai universale abitudine della saggistica e della manualistica americana di scrivere in prima persona, di infarcire la narrazione con storielle personali e commenti a margine che dovrebbero far ridere, accettabile solo se a scrivere sono le rare persone veramente toccate dal dono dell’umorismo, questo è comunque un libro abbastanza interessante. Paco Underhill, un esperto di marketing applicato ai centri commerciali, visita appunto un centro commerciale e si accompagna ad alcuni clienti, reali o immaginari, con i quali intesse fitti dialoghi, utilizzando un approccio che ricorda certi esempi della filosofia antica; il tutto ad illustrazione delle proprie o delle altrui tesi in merito alla commercializzazione dei beni, alla distribuzione degli spazi, all’illuminazione, agli arredi delle aree pubbliche, ecc. ecc. ecc. Bisogna comunque dire che il centro commerciale, o mall, a cui fa riferimento l’autore è qualcosa di differente rispetto a quello che troviamo in Europa, e specificamente in Italia, anche se alcune sue idee e osservazioni sono applicabili ad entrambi i contesti. Tanto per dire, in Italia risulterebbe difficile immaginare un enorme scatolone in periferia in cui trovino posto gioiellerie di Cartier e botiques di fascia alta di Armani o Prada, e nessun supermercato alimentare; invece, pare che spesso il mall americano sia proprio questo. In effetti qui da noi viaggia molto un modello, peraltro importato, credo, dalla Francia, in cui vari negozi molto “medi” – leggi, banconate di stracci made in China però venduti come se fossero prodotti di tendenza, bigiotterie e profumerie di basso profilo e vari negozi di “inutilities” – fanno da contorno al più classico dei supermercati, dove si compra la pasta, il detersivo, la tenda da campeggio a giugno, la cartella per la scuola a settembre e le decorazioni per l’albero a Natale. I centri commerciali in cui il negozio “singolo” prevale sul supermercato da noi ci sono ma sono decisamente più rari; un caso diverso è invece quello che l’autore chiama “shopping center” (ci ho messo un po’ a capire di che si trattasse) e che sono in sostanza aggregazioni di negozi, anche di grandi dimensioni, ciascuno dei quali mantiene la propria individualità ed autonomia, al limite in una struttura architettonica unificata (da noi una vaga analogia potrebbero essere certe aree commerciali dove attorno un unico parcheggio ci sono i “cubi” di Media World, Carrefour, Brico Center, ecc. ecc). Quello che invece paradossalmente sembra che negli USA manchi del tutto pare sia l’outlet come sta diventando di moda in Italia e forse non solo; Underhill cita con stupore divertito e ammirato, indicandolo come possibile sblocco per una prospettiva commerciale ormai in crisi e che pare aver fatto il suo tempo (il mall, appunto), il Serravalle Outlet, perso nelle nebbie al margine di un’autostrada e lontano da qualsiasi grande città. Comunque, alcune osservazioni sono sicuramente vere per tutte le situazioni in cui molti esercizi commerciali si trovano sotto lo stesso tetto. Una prima di ogni altra: il fatto che il centro commerciale è un paradiso per i bambini che si divertono, gli adolescenti che socializzano, e le donne che fanno shopping. Per tutti gli altri, cioè gli uomini adulti, è un inferno. Sia che ci vadano “a rimorchio” (d’altra parte ho sempre detto che per un uomo, o anche una donna, “libera di stato” in preda a qualche dubbio sulla propria condizione, una visita in un centro commerciale al sabato pomeriggio, tra bambini urlanti e genitori isterici li rassicurerà immediatamente sulla felicità e la fortuna della medesima) e quindi saranno uccisi dalla noia dell’attesa. Sia che ci entrino da soli perché devono comprarsi magari un paio di pantaloni e per questo devono a) trovare parcheggio b) trovare un negozio che venda abbigliamento maschile c) trovare qualcuno che ti dia retta, ecc. ecc… e di sicuro non sono minimamente sedotti (come invece le donne) dalla prospettiva di vagare di negozio in negozio, fare confronti, chiedere consigli e quant’altro. Per quanto mi riguarda: che nostalgia del grande negozio di periferia con un assortimento pressoché infinito di giacche e pantaloni, anche quelli delle passate stagioni che non venivano prontamente “rottamati”, dove senza fare tanta strada eri SICURO di trovare sempre quello che ti serviva… Nota personale in margine: penso, e temo, che la logica del centro commerciale come presenza orientativa e anche rassicurante nella geografia dello spirito ci abbia un po’ contaminati nel profondo. Io, per i motivi di cui sopra, non li amo e considero una maledizione anche dover andare a comprare un pacco di pasta; tuttavia, nel mio recente viaggio in Calabria, ero un po’ (tanto) disorientato dal fatto che le strade che ho percorso (non propriamente strade secondarie, peraltro) ne fossero del tutto prive. Salvo tranquillizzarmi quando, passato il confine con la Basilicata, sono magicamente riapparsi. Ancora: quando vado a Berlino, sono felice, oltre che di rivedere la città che amo coi boschi, i laghi, i buoni ristoranti ecc. ecc. anche di poter riandare al Saturn e al Media Markt (Media World) di Alexanderplatz, dove trovo un sacco di roba elettronica, e soprattutto accessori, di difficile reperibilità in Italia, a prezzi decisamente migliori. :-)
• 
  Mallory

  I couldn't finish this book. While there are plenty of tidbits that are interesting, it is so drawn out it takes forever to get to them ("Let's park our car... okay lets walk in the door.. blah blah"). However, you might glean some helpful information if you are in the retail industry.
• 
  Carrie Luciano

  Not sure why I read this book.
• 
  Stephen

  Paco Underhill wants to take a little walk with you through the local mall, to see it with his eyes- the eyes of a "retail anthropologist" and marketing strategist who scrutinizes malls as the environments they were built to be: shopping arenas. Born amid the automobile-guided infrastructure buildout of the 1950s, shopping malls have been the crown jewel of American consumerism, dedicated spaces of recreational consumption of goods. The walk, which begins in the parking lot and travels through the cavernous mall's innards, going even down the twisty hallways into the hidden bathrooms, takes reader on a guided tour of the territory, where even toilets don't escape scrutiny. The Call of the Mall is a little business history, a little social musing, and a little advertising/marketing examination. Written more for consumers than business students, it's an entertaining account that offers most another perspective on shopping malls.
  
  Although Underbill spends most of his working life walking around malls, his feelings regarding them are mixed. He seems to enjoy them -- the long stretches of flat marble or tile, air-conditioned walks down channels filled with eye-catching displays and even more eye-catching people -- but his job requires being both appreciative and critical. Throughout the mall tour, Underhill's perspective reveals that for all their flashiness, malls do a lot things badly. Music stores, for instance, have gone downhill since records gave way to CDs, because record sleeves could be used as eye-catching displays. CD covers are as useful for displays seen at a distance as postage stamps. Underhill is also surprised that no store has ever considered using the mall restrooms as a display area for its own equipment (but considering how much volume mall toilets get, would any retailer want to chance his toilet being associated with badly-maintained restrooms?). There are greater problems, too, unavoidable consequences of the malls' status as artifacts of suburbia. Malls are in fact very artificial environments, little island awash in a sea of pavements. A lot of their foot traffic is from teenagers who are there because they have nothing else to do; suburban teens have no place outside of home and school to go to. Underhill makes the point repeatedly that malls are limited by their environment.
  
  In revealing what malls don't do well, Underhill also points out their strengths, and explains to readers, uniitated shoppers, why they might work the way they do. He points out, for instance, that the spaces near entrances and exits are consigned as low rent. One would think otherwise considering they receive greater traffic than the interior of the mall, but Underhill comments that as people are entering a store, they need space to adjust, to adapt to their new environment. As they are making the transition, their mind ignores the first few stores they pass. He also elaborates on some of the strategies that the real estate giants who own the malls employ when deciding who rents what space; different stores have different markets, and there are dynamics to be taken into consideration. A low-end and a high-end jewelry store side by side can enhance one another's business. Underhill goes into several stores to scrutinize their specific practices; he comments on the high-end jewelry store's physical additions, for instance, how they use a black brick facade to minimize window space, sending a clear message of exclusivity to hoi-polloi outside who can't afford $80,000 necklaces.
  
  Shopping malls are a mixed bag, an experiment in retailing that may change as time passes, or may fail entirely. Demographics are changing, writes Underbill, as is technology; online stores are giving brick-and-mortar (or in suburban cases, plywood and concrete) an increasingly hard time, and this work was penned ten years ago, before Amazon Prime and similar services. The Call of the Mall will probably frustrate marketing students looking for a catalog of tricks of the trade, because while Underbill offers general suggestions and reveals a few practices, he's not going to give away the farm considering he makes a living as a consultant helping businesses organize their physical space. For the ordinary person on the street -- or in the aisles -- The Call of the Mall is an entertaining look into the workings of places we might spend a lot of our time in.
• 
  Karen Patrick

  I actually enjoyed this one and despite the ugly ass cover (I forgive you, Mr Underhill. It was 2005 and we were all too busy trying to pierce our belly buttons like Paris Hilton to worry about covers), I think this book is a very nostalgic look into the world of shopping malls and the American retail industry. It covers the rise and fall of malls, which is kind of ironic given that I read it in 2020, the year of the Retail Apocalypse. The pandemic decimated malls large and small and reading a book that already predicted this happening in 2005 is...might I say...a very 【ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ　ｅｘｐｅｒｉｅｎｃｅ】
  
  It's true. I compiled that "Ultimate List of Vaporwave books" on VK and I included this book there for good reason! Any book about shopping malls will always get me feeling nostalgic for the 80s, a decade that I never even lived in.
  
  Strengths
  
  1. Writing style
  I enjoyed the casual, familiar style of writing. Paco writes like an old friend. Literally! He opens the book with him taking us for a drive in his car. It feels like I am in the front seat of his car as he drives the both of us across suburban America, chatting calmly and casually about malls and why they exist, why we go there. I myself am so fascinated by malls because I grew up enjoying my first taste of freedom in malls and I myself am an unironic fan of Vaporwave (the music and neon aesthetics slap, dude).
  
  The next chapters all progress in the same easy, casual way as Paco writes descriptively and intimately, describing all the sights and sounds we encounter as we make our way into a generic mall. We wander around different parts of the mall in various chapters, ranging from video stores, clothing, men and women's departments, music shops, food courts and movie theatres. In each chapter, we are joined by a newcomer, a friend of Paco's who has their own thoughts or expert opinions about the mall.
  
  I loved how natural it felt! The book really helped me feel the concept of mall walking and immersed me fully in a long lost environment during those dark months of self isolation, knowing that we would not be able to walk around casually like that for a long time
  
  2. Poignant nostalgia
  
  It feels very nostalgic to be reading about the mall in 2020 or 2021. We all see them as relics of the past and I find it fascinating to see Paco's view on malls in general. It's haunting and kind of ironic that his observations and predictions in 2005 have come true today. Malls are dying in America but in Asia and the Middle East, what has once been a purely American invention has been localized and transformed into places for community to thrive and survive but there is always time till the next economic bubble pops.
  I always feel a little sad when I think about how many malls in the US have been abandoned. They symbolize the glitz and glamour of what could have been as well as the stale dreams of another era. In the book, the author was aware of Amazon and online shopping and warned mall owners that if they didn't innovate soon, these disruptive innovations would flatten them and end them for good. Did they heed his warning? Probably. His recommendations for revamping movie theatres and arranging retail shops specifically according to gender have been adopted by malls in Malaysia. Still, I see that it may not have been enough to save American malls because they inflated and grew too fast and choked on their own size.
  
  Weaknesses:
  
  Some aspects of the book are quite dated. There are definitely no more record shops or video rental shops anymore in malls. Spotify and Netflix ate all the customers up and I see yet again another haunting revelation about our endless consumerism and late stage capitalism. Other weak parts were the fact that most of the book also just contains recommendations on how mall owners or retail managers could spice up their mall sections and revamp their stores to better cater to the consumer.
  It felt like I was reading a marketing book at times and all his suggestions were actually not new to me since they've been incorporated into modern marketing tactics (guess it's a sign that Paco didn't become CEO of Envirosell for nothing!). It's a shame that he didn't dive deeper into the psychological and emotional significance of the mallgoers but I realize with great irony that perhaps I am looking too deeply at a thin onion peel, willing it to be sacred vellum. It's the mall! What depth and deep meaning can we gain from the place that sells lawn mowers, corn dogs and beauty products in the same location? Sure, I can say that it says something about our human needs and wants but I kind of wish the book said it instead of me.
  
  Final thoughts
  
  Malls are a physical manifestation of that behemoth need to spend, sell and devote ourselves to the god of wealth. Nevertheless, Paco still has a soft spot for malls, especially the unique nostalgia malls in Japan and other developing countries that still see them as exciting. It got me thinking: if America got bored of malls and left them standing as empty skeletons for Billie Eilish to film music videos in, is this the natural way of progression for all developing countries? When we developing countries grow richer and reach the saturation point of first world countries, will we also have too many empty malls that have crashed and burned? I only count 2 abandoned malls and 1 dying mall in my home town but the truth is, the trend of eating, consuming, shopping and spending nonstop will not end any time soon.
  
  We may be sick of the mall; you, me and the author...but the capitalism never ends and the appetite for greed only grows. Paco's haunting and truthful warning is definitely going to stay with me for a long time.
  
  I wonder what is the future of malls in this post-pandemic era? Will they still survive and how will they evolve? Do we need them anymore?
  
  I sure hope someone writes a book about that because I'd love to read it!
  
  Ｔｈａｎｋｓ ｆｏｒ ｓｈｏｐｐｉｎｇ． Ｈａｖｅ ａ ｎｉｃｅ ｄａｙ．
• 
  Emma Amber

  I’d like to thank this book for reminding me why I hated my social geography class. A bunch of men speaking out of their ass about women and making the women subject of jokes when they call them out for talking shit. There is no bibliography, just vibes. Social geography, human geography, economic geography… these all exist. And actual research is done. I know this book has become a bit dated, and I am curious to see how this mall consulting company is doing in 2023. I am very determined and will finish most books, but this book was a gender reductive and uninformed attempt to bring geography to the common reader.
• 
  Josiah Richardson

  This may have been a better book when it was first released, but I only now just got to reading it and it is of course now outdated. Much like Underhill's work "Why we Buy" which was a discussion on the psychology of buying, this book goes in the same direction in the context of the shopping mall. The one chapter that held it's ground through the years is the very last chapter in which Underhill predicted the end of the mall era. We have seen that in droves as the shopping malls have either reformulated themselves or shut down entirely.
• 
  Dave

  This has been on my list for so long that it was satisfying to finally find it. Then it was a satisfying read too. It felt outdated, even with the chapter on post-mall culture, but not so outdated that I don't remember mall culture well and with a mixture of fondness and annoyance.
  
  The most memorable item: Perfume counters are located in most department stores in their front and center location because they were used to block out the horse smell from the streets way back when.
  
  
• 
  Chrissa

  Chatty \informative
  
  A good text for estranging the mall experience. The informal tone was fun but tended toward making the overall read more like an extended opinion piece. I'm left wondering why the mall theater experience (a small section of the book overall) isn't better.
• 
  Shirley

  Good introduction to retail mall marketing - at the time. Environment is shifting due to the rise of online sales.
• 
  Marianne

  Interesting, but a bit cutesy in some places.
• 
  Susan

  An interesting read, but dated. Published in 2004, before the introduction of the iPhone and other smart phones, a lot of the information and conclusions do not really apply to shopping today. The history of the development of the shopping mall was informative.
• 
  Harvey

  - another interesting book by the best-known, global expert on the anthropology of shopping...Underhill pioneered an entire science surrounding studying consumer behaviour. He is C.E.O. of Envirosell Inc., a global research and consulting firm whose clients include Saks Fifth Avenue, GAP, Hallmark, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, etc, as well as hundreds of large shopping malls in dozens of countries around the world. Underhill describes the history of the shopping mall, its culture, economics, faults, design, future, etc.
  - random quote: "Here’s another bit of voodoo from the world of high-end cosmetics. The products never go on sale. Women will not buy discounted cosmetics, though they’ll buy anything else marked down as low as possible. The other day I came upon a huddle of sophisticated young Manhattan women shivering outdoors on the coldest day of the year while waiting in line at the Manolo Blahnik sale. A woman will risk hypothermia to save money on stiletto heels, but if she bought cut-rate cosmetics, she’d feel as if she were putting something ratty on her face.
  
  So instead of sales, the cosmetics manufacturers offer something known as gift-with-purchase: "Spend this much today, and you get this free gift package containing blah, blah, and blah—a $25 value!" The idea is to give shoppers the sensation of having saved $25—without discounting the cosmetics; in addition, the gifts introduce them to new products. This gift-with-purchase system has been in place for some 30 years now. But the industry has found that if a gift contains three free items, the customer will use perhaps two of them, and return to buy just one. Cosmetics executives rue the day the gift-with-purchase policy began, but it’s now a habit neither they nor their customers can break."
• 
  Nick

  I want to work for
  Paco Underhill for just one week; I fell in love with his work after
  Why We Buy, now I'm totally sold. Underhill and his operatives see things that no one else does and explain them in the simplest of terms. In
  Call of the Mall, the founder of
  Envirosell turns his attentions to everything about the shopping mall, and his observations are stunning.
  
  "On a city street," he writes, "men walk faster than women; in a mall the positions are reversed, since men tend to wander malls like semi-lost children."
  
  I love this guy. However I have to agree with other reviewers here that this book is not as solid as the first. Perhaps most annoying is his convention - which he carries out spottily - of speaking, chattily, to 'you' throughout. It's annoying. But the observations, when they come, are as trenchant as they were his first time out:
  
  "Here's another hint of voodoo in the world of high end cosmetics," he observes, "they never go on sale. ever. Because women, it is thought, will not buy discounted cosmetics....Women will risk hypothermia to save money on stiletto heels, but cut-rate cosmetics feels like you're putting something ratty on your face."
  
• 
  Jinal Shah (If I Were Marketing)

  Recently, I got a project on Shopper Marketing. Its a very interesting field of marketing. In college, i had read Paco Underhill's Why We Buy. Had loved it. It was eye opening. So thought, lets brush up on shopper marketing by reading the same author's latest work. Hence, this book.
  
  The book may have worked well when launched but in today's world, reading about malls is akin to reading historical fiction. It is a walk down memory lane (even if not your own memory). Things like this used to exist but they barely register now. In today's times of ecommerce madness, offline shopping is suffering in general, including malls.
  
  Having said that, the ideas suggested in the book for store design, cinema experience enhancement, other customer experience ideas- they are timeless. They still apply and are still equally relevant. Why no one has implemented them yet is a wonder.
  
  To me as a marketer, the book was worth purely for these varied, logical yet unusual retail experience ideas like different types of theaters for different types of movies or splitting food court into kids food court and gourmet food court etc.
• 
  Michael Mcclelland

  A patchy history, critique and explanation of the shopping mall. The book suffers quite a bit from its structure with the author very informally narrating a journey to, and through, a mall. Despite the stated pedigree of the writer (he's been involved in a commercial consultancy firm advising retailers for the past 25-odd years) there is a profound lack of hard data. This, along with the aforementioned structure, in which he journeys along and converses with a cast of typical shoppers, employees and the occasional industry insider, tends to portray him as opinionated, rather than expert.
  
  
  
  There are some interesting factoids (some stores are deliberately confusing so that you need assistance from an employee - which makes you more likely to buy something), some excuse for the bland architecture (malls are designed by real estate developers, rather than merchants trying to draw you inside), and some views on the future of malls (terminal, without combination with residential or a more immersive sensory experience). Largely, you are left wanting more.
• 
  Ginger

  Liked it almost as much as Why We Buy. Very interesting non-fiction niche read; slightly more boring less humorous than Why We Buy. This book is just on the dynamics of malls; or I should more accurately say, the static-ness, the geography, even the architecture of malls. Because I shopped them a lot as a girl, I felt like I was looking back through a window in time to the factors I was unaware of when I shopped malls more frequently. While it initially may not sound very interesting, I think these self-described "niche reads" give us glimpses into our societies or an industry that help us understand the world a bit better. Common Grounds by Mark Pendergrast is another "niche read" I recommend.
• 
  Becky

  I saw Paco Underhill speak at a symposium at NYPL; looking forward to this book. . . . Quick, interesting read. I picked up some ideas I can use at the library. For example, having baskets available for patrons to use could increase borrowing. Good idea! Another tip, have comfortable seating available for people waiting on a family member who is browsing. We do have comfortable seating, but I might rearrange and make the seating area more welcoming.
  
  Even if you are not looking for marketing ideas, this is a good read. A quick sociological/cultural/anthropological tour of American malls and malls abroad. It's also a bit of a history lesson and a glimpse to the future of shopping and malls. Recommended.
• 
  David McClendon, Sr

  Paco Underhill does it again. He has a way of making you look at how you buy and where you buy in a whole new way. If you are in any form of business that sells anything or that advertises anything you must read this book and Why We Buy.
  
  This book, although a little "Self Promoting" takes the reader through a tour of a mall and points out different things that should interest anyone who is in a retail business. There is a great deal of repeat information from the book Why We Buy and that is a little annoying. Otherwise it is an interesting book.