why we buy book review

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping—Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer and Beyond 

Published on:

• August 23, 2022

As a marketer whose job is to get people to buy stuff, it stands to reason that you should understand WHY people buy things in the first place—right?

Makes sense to me. And that’s why this book is absolutely required reading for all marketers and business owners.

You’ll learn the science of shopping, including many of the reasons why we really choose to buy the things we do. The insights in this book are broken out into topics like demographics; the dynamics of sight, sound, and touch; differences in culture; and the actual mechanics of shopping itself.

Make sure to get the updated version for its new chapters on digital shopping.

DigitalMarketer

Subscribe to the dm insider newsletter.

Marketing Skills

Digital Advertising Content Marketing Email Marketing Search Marketing Social Media Marketing Copywriting Ecommerce Marketing Analytics & Data Community Management Optimization & Testing

Marketing Topics

Google Facebook Instagram YouTube Email LinkedIn Twitter Pinterest TikTok Influencer/Affiliate

Customer Value Journey Stages

Awareness Engagement Subscription Convert Excite Ascend Advocate Promote

Agencies & Consultants

Become A Partner Find a Partner

Newsletter Blog Podcast Case Studies

Certifications Workshops M3 Mastermind Traffic & Conversion Summit

About Us Our Process Our Faculty Our Partners Our Coaches Testimonials Careers  Work with Us Events

Legal & Info

Support FAQ Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions  Contact Us

© 2023 All Rights Reserved. Powered by DigitalMarketer.

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

THE SCIENCE OF SHOPPING

by Paco Underhill ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1999

Shopping is one of the defining qualities of modern civilization, but this author convincingly argues that consumers may have a greater impact on the act of shopping than shopping has on them. Just as social scientists study people in natural conditions, Underhill studies consumers in retail environments. He’s no academic, however, but a “real-world” consultant with such clients as McDonald’s, General Mills, and the US Postal Service. Although Underhill’s work involves a certain amount of intuition and creative thinking, it’s primarily based on hard evidence: the measurements accumulated by teams of trackers working on the floors and behind the scenes of retail establishments. Details gathered from observation of consumers pinpoint problems with products, shelving, signage, register lines, and other factors. Such monitoring prompted one of the author’s key insights—that any space in which people are likely to be jostled from behind can lead to shopper discomfort (dubbed “butt sensitivity”). The solution: wider aisles. Underhill explores both similarities and differentiating features in the shopping experiences of varied groups, including the distinctive ways in which men and women browse and make purchasing decisions. His dissection of the retail industry finds much to criticize, but the book also dignifies shopping as a central focus of human activity. The author’s company, whose work is cited throughout, has earned its way by spotting flaws and advising retail owners on how to fix them, not merely to boost profits, but because the profits come from improving the quality of the shopping experience for customers. Underhill also analyzes the emerging arena of online shopping, offering tips for improved performance. Sales here will accelerate, the author believes, but they don—t fundamentally threaten the future of old-fashioned human sales interactions. A strong portrait of consumers as the most efficient arbiters of what to sell and how to sell it. (Author tour)

Pub Date: May 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-684-84913-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999

BUSINESS | GENERAL BUSINESS

Share your opinion of this book

More by Paco Underhill

BOOK REVIEW

by Paco Underhill

THE CULTURE MAP

Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business.

by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

BUSINESS | PSYCHOLOGY

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BUSINESS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ECONOMICS

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

CHAPTER ONE Why We Buy The Science of Shopping By PACO UNDERHILL Simon & Schuster Read the Review A Science Is Born Comfortable shoes, the American commercial camouflage uniform — khaki pants, olive polo shirt, no aftershave and good, thick, dun-colored socks. Okay, stroll, stroll, stroll... stop. Get out the clipboard and pen. Shhh. Stay behind that potted palm. This is the first track of the day. The subject of study is the fortyish woman in the tan trench coat and blue skirt. She's in the bath section. She's touching towels. Mark this down — she's petted one, two, three, four of them so far. She just checked the price tag on one. Mark that down, too. Careful, her head's coming up — blend into the aisle. She's picking up two towels from the tabletop display and is leaving the section with them. Get the time. Now, tail her into the aisle and on to her next stop. It's another day of fieldwork; the laboratory, another troubled department store. The focus of our analysis is the domestic department as per the science of shopping. But let's start by addressing a fundamental question: Since when does such a scholarly discipline even exist? Well, if, say, anthropology had devoted a branch to the study of modern shoppers in situ, a fancy Latin way of saying shoppers out shopping, interacting with retail environments (not only stores, but also banks and restaurants), including but not limited to every rack, shelf, counter and table display of merchandise, every sign, banner, brochure, directional aid and computerized interactive informational fixture, the entrances and exits, the windows and walls, the elevators and escalators and stairs and ramps, the cashier lines and teller lines and counter lines and restroom lines, and every inch of every aisle — in short, every nook and cranny from the farthest reach of the parking lot to the deepest penetration of the store itself — that would be the start of the science of shopping. And if anthropology had already been studying all that...and not simply studying the store, but what, exactly human beings do in it, where they go and don't go, and by what path they go there; what they see and fail to see, or read and decline to read; and how they deal with the objects they come upon, how they shop, you might say — the precise anatomical mechanics and behavioral psychology of how they pull a sweater from a rack to examine it, or read a box of heartburn pills or a fast-food restaurant menu, or deploy a shopping basket, or react to the sight of a line at the ATMs...again, as I say, if anthropology had been paying attention, and not just paying attention but then collating, digesting, tabulating and cross-referencing every little bit of data, from the extremely broad (How many people enter this store on a typical Saturday morning broken down by age, sex and size of shopper group?) to the extremely narrow (Do more male supermarket shoppers under thirty-five who read the nutritional information on the side panel of a cereal box actually buy the cereal compared to those who just look at the picture on the front?), well, then we wouldn't have had to try to invent the science of shopping. But anthropology didn't pay attention to those details, and so down the hall from my office is a room containing around fifty cameras, mostly video but with some still and digital cameras and a couple of old-fashioned Super 8 time-lapse film cameras thrown in. Next to them are piled cases of blank 8mm videotapes, two hours per tape, five hundred tapes to a case. We go through about fourteen cases, seven thousand tapes, a year. (In 1992, when we shot a lot of time-lapse Super 8 film — about $60,000 worth — Kodak told us we were the single largest consumer of Super 8 film in the world.) We also have maybe a dozen handheld computers on which we take down the answers from the thousands of shopper interviews we conduct, and there are some odd laptops in there, too, plus all manner of tripods, mounts, lenses and other camera accessories, including lots of duct tape. Oh, and hardshell cases for everything, because it all travels. A lot. We have enough gear in that room to equip a major university's school of social anthropology or experimental psychology, assuming the university has a deserved reputation for generating tons of original research gathered all over the globe. Despite all that high-tech equipment, though, our most important research tool is a low-tech piece of paper we call the track sheet, in the hands of the individuals we call trackers. Trackers are the field researchers of the science of shopping, the scholars of shopping, or, more precisely, of shoppers. Essentially, trackers stealthily make their way through stores following shoppers and noting everything they do. Usually, a tracker begins by loitering inconspicuously near a store's entrance, waiting for a shopper to enter, at which point the "track" starts. The tracker will stick with the unsuspecting individual (or individuals) as long as the shopper is in the store (excluding trips to the dressing room or the restroom) and will record on the track sheet virtually everything he or she does. Sometimes, when the store is large, trackers work in teams in order to be less intrusive. Befitting a science that has grown up in the real world, meaning far from the ivory towers of academia, our trackers are not an taken from the usual researcher mold. In the beginning we hired graduate environmental psychology students, but we found they were sometimes unsuited to the work and tended to come to the job burdened with textbook theories they wanted to apply. As a result, they often didn't possess the patience necessary to simply watch what shoppers do. The other problem we had with grad students involved stamina: While we don't work in the dusty heat of Mesopotamia, twelve hours on your feet under the fluorescent lights at Kmart is no picnic either. Fieldwork in any physical or social science is difficult. We found that, for our purposes, smart, creative people — artists, actors, writers, a puppeteer — often have what it takes. Beyond the fact that they have no theories to uphold or demolish, their professional skills are often rooted in their ability to observe. Also, it does not hurt that they have flexible schedules, so that when that Brazilian brewer or Australian tampon manufacturer or American fast-food operator happens to call, they have the open calendar and curiosity to be willing to go take a look. When we find someone we think has the temperament and the intelligence for this work, we first put him or her through a training session. There's a lot to learn -- how do I watch and simultaneously take notes, for instance, or how can I tell whether someone is reading a sign or just staring at the mirror next to it? We have to teach the most important tracker skill of all: How do I stand close enough to study someone without being noticed? It's crucial to our work that shoppers don't realize they're being observed. There's no other way to be sure that we're seeing natural behavior. Fact is, we're all still surprised by how close you can stand to someone in a store and still remain invisible. We find that positioning yourself behind the shopper is a bad idea — we all know the sensation that we're being watched. But if you stand to the side of a shopper, his or her peripheral vision "reads" you as just another customer — harmless, in other words, and barely worth noticing. From that position you can get close enough to see exactly what a shopper is doing. You can be sure that he's touched, say, nine golf gloves, not eight or ten. Then we throw the tracker hopefuls out into the real world, in a store setting, to see them in action. Most of them wash out at this point — you can teach technique, but not the intelligence or the slight case of fascination required to do this work well. Over half of our core group of thirty U.S. trackers have been with us for more than five years, some for a decade or more. It's hard work, but addictive, too. in teams of three to ten people, led by a member of our staff, they crisscross the United States and Canada, as well as Europe, South America and Australia, visiting every kind of retail business imaginable, from banks to fast-food restaurants to high-fashion boutiques to hangar-size discounters and everything in between. To make our international work easier and more efficient, for three years we have had research teams based out of Milan, Italy, and for two years out of Sydney, Australia. In addition to measuring and counting every significant motion of a shopping trip, the trackers must also contribute incisive field notes describing the nuances of customer behavior, making intelligent inferences based on what they've observed. These notes add up to yet another, this time anecdotal, layer of information about a given environment and how people use it. The forms our trackers use have evolved over the two decades we've been doing this research. They are the key to the entire enterprise, an achievement in the art of information storage and retrieval, nondigital division. Our earliest track sheets could record maybe ten different variables of shopper behavior. Today we're up to around forty. The form is reinvented for every research project we undertake, but typically it starts with a detailed map depicting the premises we're about to study, whether it's a store, a bank branch, a parking lot (for a drive-thru project) or just a single section or even just one aisle of a store. The map shows every doorway and aisle, every display, every shelf and rack and table and counter. Also on the form is space for information about the shopper (sex, race, estimates of age, description of attire) and what he or she does in the store. Using the system of shorthand notation, a combination of symbols, letters and hash marks, a tracker can record, for instance, that a bald, bearded man in a red sweater and blue jeans entered a department store on a Saturday at 11:07 a.m., walked directly to a first-floor display of wallets, picked up or otherwise touched a total of twelve of them, checked the price tag on four, then chose one, moved at 11:16 to a nearby tie rack, stroked seven ties, read the contents tags on all seven, read the price on two, then bought none and went directly to the cashier to pay. Oh, wait, he paused for a moment at a mannequin and examined the price tag on the jacket it wore. We'd mark that down, too, just as we'd note that he entered the cashier line at 11:23 as the third person in line, waited two minutes and fifty-one seconds to get to the register, paid with a credit card and exited the store at 11:30. Depending on the size of the store and the length of the typical shopper's stay, a tracker can study up to fifty shoppers a day. Usually we'll have several trackers at a site, and a single project may involve the simultaneous study of three or four locations in separate cities over a series of different weekends. By the end of a job, an incredible amount of information has been crammed onto those sheets. They come back to the office where the job captain spends a day "cleaning" the forms — making sure that each hash mark is visible and that every box that should be filled out has been. Then our data department spends another day or so entering all the information, every single notation on every track sheet, into a data base. Over the years we've spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless frustrating hours with computer programmers, trying to come up with a data base system that could handle the kind of work we do. The big problem is that while we crunch the same numbers in the same ways from job to job, each project usually requires us to do something a little differently — to collect different kinds of data, or to devise new comparisons of facts we've uncovered. We've hired fancy consultants who've spent six months at a crack with us, trying to build us a computer system. They ask us to list everything we want our program to do, but every week we add six new things to the list that negate all their work from the previous month. And, of course, our turnaround time must be swift, so there's no time to change the system completely for each job — we may need to do one new comparison for a project today and then not have to perform that function again for seven months. Until recently, most of our work was done in Microsoft Excel. Excel is not a data base program but a spreadsheet program, intended to help accountants do relatively simple flat calculations. Excel's beauty is its open architecture — you can get in there under the hood and tinker, and soup it up. And that's exactly what we've done. It's as though Microsoft built a very nice bicycle ten years ago and we've turned it into a databusting all-terrain vehicle. Today we run much of our work in FileMaker and SPSS, but still vet it in Excel. When the videotapes come back from the sites, it's someone else's job to screen every foot. Depending on the size of the store, we may have ten cameras running eight hours a day trained on specific areas — a doorway, for example, or a particular shelf of products. We videotape around twenty thousand hours' worth of store time annually. The video produces even more hard data; if, for example, a study is meant to determine in part how a particular cash register design affects worker fatigue, we may use the video and a stopwatch to time how long it takes for a clerk to ring up a sale at 10 a.m. compared to 4 p.m. The list of particulars we're capable of studying — what we call the deliverables — grows with every new project we take on. At last count, we've measured close to nine hundred different aspects of shopper-store interaction. As a result of all that, we know quite a few facts about how human beings behave in stores. We can tell you how many males who take jeans into the fitting room will buy them compared to how many females will (65 percent to 25 percent). We can tell you how many people in a corporate cafeteria read the nutritional information on a bag of corn chips before buying (18 percent) compared to those lunching at a local sandwich shop (2 percent). Or how many browsers buy computers on a Saturday before noon (4 percent) as opposed to after 5 p.m. (21 percent). Or how many shoppers in a mall housewares store use shopping baskets (8 percent), and how many of those who take baskets actually buy something (75 percent) compared to those who buy without using baskets (34 percent). And then, of course, we draw on all we've learned in the past to suggest ways of increasing the number of shoppers who take baskets, for the science of shopping is, if it is anything, a highly practical discipline concerned with using research, comparison and analysis to make stores and products more amenable to shoppers. Because this science has been invented as we have gone along, it's a living, breathing field of study. We never quite know what we'll find until we find it, and even then we sometimes have to stop to figure out what it is we've seen. For example, we discovered a phenomenon known as the butt-brush effect almost accidentally. As part of an early study for Bloomingdale's in New York City, we trained a camera on one of the main ground-floor entrances, and the lens just happened to also take in a rack of neckties positioned near the entrance, on a main aisle. While reviewing the tape to study how shoppers negotiated the doorway during busy times, we began to notice something weird about the tie rack. Shoppers would approach it, stop and shop until they were bumped once or twice by people heading into or out of the store. After a few such jostles, most of the shoppers would move out of the way, abandoning their search for neckwear. We watched this over and over until it seemed clear that shoppers — women especially, though it was also true of men to a lesser extent — don't like being brushed or touched from behind. They'll even move away from merchandise they're interested in to avoid it. When we checked with our client, we learned that sales from that tie rack were lower than they expected from a fixture located on a main thoroughfare. The butt-brush factor, we surmised, was why that rack was an underperformer. As I was delivering our findings to the store's president, he jumped up from the conference table, grabbed a phone, called down to the floor of the store and had someone move that tie rack immediately to a spot just off the main aisle. A few weeks later the head of store planning called me to say that sales from the rack had gone up quickly and substantially. Since that day we've found countless similar situations in which shoppers have been spooked by too-close quarters. In every case, a quick adjustment was all that was needed. Another such "accident" of patient observation and analysis happened during a supermarket study we performed for a dog food manufacturer. When we staked out the pet aisle, we noticed that while adults bought the dog food, the dog treats -- liver-flavored biscuits and such — were often being picked out by children or senior citizens. We realized that for the elderly, pets are like children, creatures to be spoiled. And while feeding Fido may not be any child's favorite chore, filling him up with doggie cookies can be loads of fun. Parents indulged their little ones' pleas for treats here just as they did over in the cookie aisle. Because no one had ever noticed who exactly was buying (or lobbying for the purchase of) pet treats, they were typically stocked near the top of the supermarket shelves. As a result, our cameras caught children climbing the shelving to reach the treats. We witnessed one elderly woman using a box of aluminum foil to knock down her brand of dog biscuits. Move the treats to where kids and little old ladies can reach them, we advised the client. The client did so, and sales went up overnight. Even the plainest truths can get lost in all the details of planning and stocking a store. A phrase I find myself using over and over with clients is this: The obvious isn't always apparent. While studying the cosmetics section of a drugstore chain, we watched a woman in her sixties approach a wall rack, study it carefully and then kneel before it so she could find the one item she needed — concealer cream, which, because of its lack of glamour, was kept at the very bottom of the display. Similarly, in a department store we watched an overweight man try to find his size of underwear at a large aisle display — and saw him stoop dangerously low to reach it, down near the floor. In both cases, logic should have dictated that the displays be tailored to the shoppers who use them, not to the designers who made them. Move the concealer up, we advised, and put something aimed at teen shoppers down near the floor — the teens will find their products wherever they're stocked. In some studies, we synthesize every bit of information we can possibly collect into a comprehensive portrait of a store or a single department. A major jeans manufacturer wanted to know how its product was sold in department stores, so in one weekend we descended on four sites, two in New England and two in Southern California. Each department was similar — the jeans section was a square area that held from eight to twelve tabletop displays and some wall shelving. We started by drawing a detailed map of each, showing the displays and the aisles leading into and out of the sections, but also where any signs or other promotional materials were posted. During that weekend we tracked a total of 815 shoppers and observed many more on camera, both video and time-lapse. We paid particular attention to the "doorways" — our term for any path leading into or out of an area of a store. Until the client knew which paths were most popular, it was impossible to make informed decisions about where to stock what, or where to place the merchandising materials meant to lure shoppers. By the time our study was completed, we could say which percentage of customers used which paths into each of the sections. Once we knew that, it was clear, for instance, that much of the signage was misplaced — common sense dictated that it be positioned to face the main entrance of the store, but we found that most jeans shoppers came upon the section from a completely different direction. Even the client's big neon logo and a monitor showing rock videos were facing the wrong way if their job was to signal the greatest number of shoppers. We tracked shoppers from table to table, seeing where they stopped, what signs they read, whether they noticed the video monitors, and how they handled the merchandise, including whether they took anything to the dressing rooms. If they seemed to be showing jeans to a companion, we noted that, too. Some of the shoppers captured on video were also questioned by our interviewers, so that their demographic information and their attitudes and opinions could be correlated with their behaviors — to see, for example, whether young shoppers with high school educations who say they depend on name brand when choosing jeans read price tags. After the research is done and the numbers are crunched and analyzed, we see what sense can be made of what we've learned. For example, if we were to find that a high percentage of male shoppers buy from the first rack of jeans they encounter, and that shoppers tend to enter the section through the aisle leading from men's accessories rather than from the women's side of the store or from the escalator, then we would advise our client to ask for the display table nearest men's accessories. Or maybe there's another determining factor — maybe men who are accompanied by females and entering the section from the women's department buy more jeans than men who are alone. in that case, the best table would be nearest the women's merchandise. But no one knows for sure until we collect the data. In other instances we're hired to study some small retail interaction in great detail. One such project was commissioned by a premium shampoo maker that wanted to know about the decision-making process of women shoppers who buy generic or store-brand beauty products. The client was interested in the "value equation" women bring to each shopping experience — how does the shopper who buys from the generics section at the supermarket in the morning and then from Nordstrom in the afternoon decide which product she'll buy where? Does she judge that her skin deserves the premium brand but her hair can settle for the generic? Once upon a time only the budget-conscious bought store brands, but now you find them in everyone's shopping basket. Let's call her shopper number 24, a thirtysomething woman in yellow pants and white sweater, accompanied by a preschool girl, who enters the health and beauty aisle of a supermarket at 10:37 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. She has a handbasket, not a shopping cart, and has already selected store-brand vitamin C capsules, a large container of Johnson's Baby Powder and a packet of snapshots she picked up at the photo-processing booth. She is also holding a shopping list and the store circular. She goes directly to the shampoo shelves and picks up a bottle of Pantene brand, reads the front label, then picks up a bottle of the store brand and reads the front label, then reads the price tag on the Pantene, then reads the price on the store brand, and then puts the store brand in her basket and exits the section forty-nine seconds after she entered it. In that brief encounter, there was lots of data to collect — what she touched, what she read and in what order, about twenty-five different data points in all. If, in one day, we track a hundred shoppers in that store's health and beauty aisle, it can amount to 2,500 separate data entries. As the woman exits the section, we interview her, asking twenty questions in all. So each of the twenty-five data points has to be cross-tabulated with each of her twenty answers — a cross-tab challenge, take it from me. No university, to my knowledge, has ever attempted behavioral research in the retail environment to the degree that we have. My old colleagues in the world of academia regard what we do with envy and horror — envy because we get to do what we do and get paid for it, horror because we actually stick our necks out and are held accountable for the success or failure of our suggestions. After almost twenty years of work, our client list is as blue-chip as they come, and while we do get it wrong sometimes, three-quarters of our clients who buy us once come back for more. (C) 1998 Obat, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-684-84913-5

58 pages • 1 hour read

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Key Figures

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

In Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, author Paco Underhill argues that people make purchases not so much because they are useful and sensible but because they are part of a pleasing shopping experience. First published in 2000 and revised for the Internet Age in 2009, Why We Buy became an international bestseller and has been translated into 27 languages. The 2009 Kindle edition (ASIN: B001QA4SY2) is the basis for this guide.

Underhill, an environmental psychologist, is founder and CEO of market research company Envirosell , Inc. His teams of researchers observe buyer behaviors in stores, making detailed notes and recording videos to learn precisely how patrons respond to displays, signage, store layouts, and myriad other details of the shopping experience. Envirosell’s clients include Microsoft, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Estée Lauder, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, Sam's Club, Pepsi-Co, Adidas, and Unilever.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

• 7,400+ In-Depth Study Guides
• 4,950+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
• Downloadable PDFs

Why We Buy is divided into five parts, each focusing on a different aspect of buyer behavior. Part 1 explains how every attribute of a retail establishment, from the parking lot to the size of the store aisles, can affect what, and how much, shoppers will buy. A small change in the positioning of a display or the arrangement of shelving can boost sales; the wrong wording on a sign can cause merchandise to go unsold. Many retail executives are largely unaware of these details, and their businesses suffer as a result.

Part 2 points out that human physiology limits the way people shop. They tend to enter stores in a certain way, a tendency that affects which displays they’ll look at and which they’ll ignore. People have only two hands, and accounting for this can have a serious effect on how much they’ll buy. Customers wander through large stores in a certain pattern, and if the floor plan doesn’t account for this, entire departments will go unvisited. Patrons study some signs and ignore others. They also improvise, selecting merchandise in surprising ways or sitting in the wrong places, to the consternation of sellers.

The SuperSummary difference

• 8x more resources than SparkNotes and CliffsNotes combined
• Study Guides you won ' t find anywhere else
• 100+ new titles every month

In Part 3, Underhill provides a detailed description of the differences in shopping styles of men and women. A feminist revolution in retailing has greatly reduced these contrasts, but many still remain—women’s attention to detail and men’s impulsive hurry, for example—and store owners must take them into account if they’re to stay afloat in a rapidly changing retail environment. Part 3 also touches on the different buying styles and needs of the elderly, as well as the power of children to influence their parents’ purchases.

Details of store sales get a close look in Part 4. Shoppers need to touch and heft merchandise; they become impatient if made to wait, especially at checkout; and they respond positively to products that capture their attention. Also discussed are the Big Three elements of marketing: store design, merchandise selection, and staff behavior.

Part 5 ventures overseas to explore international sales and the shopping habits of different countries. Envirosell branched out to Europe, South America, India, Mexico, and Japan, in the process learning the subtleties of various cultures and their preferences. The company also learned that most shopping behavior is similar the world over. Part 5 also looks at the threat e-commerce poses to brick-and-mortar stores.

Throughout the book, Underhill explains the mistakes retailers make and how to fix them while illuminating a great deal about readers’ own tendencies when visiting stores, potentially making us more astute at recognizing places that offer the shopping experience we prefer. 

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Featured Collections

Business & Economics

View Collection

Why We Buy, Updated and Revised Edition

• The Science of Shopping

By: Paco Underhill

• Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
• Length: 12 hrs
• 4.1 out of 5 stars 4.1 (328 ratings)

Failed to add items

Add to cart failed., add to wish list failed., remove from wishlist failed., adding to library failed, follow podcast failed, unfollow podcast failed.

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $17.90

No default payment method selected.

We are sorry. we are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method, listeners also enjoyed....

• The Brave New World of Food and Drink
• Narrated by: Adam Barr, Aden Hakimi, Karissa Vacker
• Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 18
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 15
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 15

Our food system is undergoing a total transformation that impacts how we produce, get, and consume our food. Market researcher and bestselling author Paco Underhill—hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a Sherlock Holmes for retailers”—reveals where our eating and drinking lives are heading in his “delectable” (Michael Gross, New York Times bestselling author of 740 Park ) book, How We Eat .

• 5 out of 5 stars

Eye Opening

• By Logan on 10-07-23

Reengineering Retail

• The Future of Selling in a Post-Digital World

By: Doug Stephens

• Narrated by: Doug Stephens
• Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 113
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 95
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 95

Since the release of Doug Stephens’ first book, The Retail Revival , change in the global retail sector has accelerated beyond even the boldest forecasts. As predicted, online giants like Amazon and Alibaba.com are growing at a dizzying pace. Hundreds of well-known brick-and-mortar retailers have closed their doors, and brands and retailers across categories are struggling to understand the shifting needs and expectations of a new consumer.

• 1 out of 5 stars

Full of selection bias

• By Peter on 03-08-19

Remarkable Retail

• How to Win and Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption

By: Steve Dennis

• Narrated by: Steve Dennis
• Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 17
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 12
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 12

Digital technology has profoundly altered the competitive landscape for retailers. Although the shutdown of 2020 didn’t cause this trend, it has dramatically accelerated it, collapsing retailers’ transformation timeline into a matter of months, not years. In Remarkable Retail , industry thought leader Steve Dennis argues that it’s no longer enough merely to offer convenience, decent prices, or an okay shopping experience. Even very good is no longer good enough. To win and keep customers today, retailers must be nothing short of remarkable.

Brilliant and very insightful !!

• By Mayte Forjan Arce on 05-02-22

By: Walter Isaacson

• Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Walter Isaacson
• Length: 20 hrs and 39 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 6,308
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 5,635
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 5,629

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.

• 4 out of 5 stars

megalomania on display

• By JP on 09-12-23

• Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

By: Martin Lindstrom

• Narrated by: Don Leslie
• Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 752
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 456
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 453

Based on the single largest neuromarketing study ever conducted, Buyology reveals surprising truths about what attracts our attention and captures our dollars.

Very High Word to Idea Ratio

• By Pamela on 04-08-09

What Women Want

• The Global Marketplace Turns Female Friendly
• Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 43
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 36
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 37

Paco Underhill, the author of the hugely successful Why We Buy and Call of the Mall , reports on the growing importance of women in everybody’s marketplace - what makes a package, product, space, or service “female friendly”. Underhill offers a tour of the world’s marketplace - with shrewd observations and practical applications to help everybody adapt to the new realities.

• 3 out of 5 stars
• By rebecca armstrong on 03-08-19

Building a StoryBrand

• Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

By: Donald Miller

• Narrated by: Donald Miller
• Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 12,034
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 10,247
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 10,176

Donald Miller's StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their businesses. This revolutionary method for connecting with customers provides listeners with the ultimate competitive advantage, revealing the secret for helping their customers understand the compelling benefits of using their products, ideas, or services.

• 2 out of 5 stars

Have you heard of the SB7 Framework?

• By Tyson on 01-29-18

• Why Things Catch On

By: Jonah Berger

• Narrated by: Keith Nobbs
• Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,831
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,766
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,729

Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral? Word of mouth makes products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. It's more influential than advertising and far more effective. Can you create word of mouth for your product or idea? According to Berger, you can. Whether you operate a neighborhood restaurant, a corporation with hundreds of employees, or are running for a local office for the first time, the steps that can help your product or idea become viral are the same.

A Primer on Viral & Memorable Marketing

• By Douglas C. Bates on 04-01-13

Fix This Next

• Make the Vital Change That Will Level Up Your Business

By: Mike Michalowicz

• Narrated by: Mike Michalowicz
• Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 680
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 552
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 544

From Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First , Clockwork , and The Pumpkin Plan , comes the ultimate diagnostic tool for every entrepreneur.... The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they don't know what their biggest problem is. If you find yourself trapped between stagnating sales, staff turnover, and unhappy customers, what do you fix first? Every issue seems urgent—but there's no way to address all of them at once. The result? A business that continues to go in endless circles putting out urgent fires and prioritizing the wrong things.

Business Bible

• By Amazon Customer on 09-17-20

Predictably Irrational

• The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

By: Dan Ariely

• Narrated by: Simon Jones
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 12,494
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,789
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,760

In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.

Good lessons, mediocre science?

• By William Stanger on 02-24-09

Resurrecting Retail

• The Future of Business in a Post-Pandemic World
• Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 16

From two-time, international best-selling author and futurist Doug Stephens, Resurrecting Retail is not just a riveting story of the unprecedented crash of an industry during this time of crisis but a road map for its rebirth. Meticulously researched in real time from inside the crisis, Resurrecting Retail provides a comprehensive and surprising vision of how COVID-19 will reshape every aspect of consumer life, including the very essence of why we shop. 

• By Andrea K. on 03-20-23

The Tipping Point

• How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

By: Malcolm Gladwell

• Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
• Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 22,161
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 17,259
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 17,172

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

My tipping point…for audio

• By Mod on 04-17-12

The Paradox of Choice

• Why More is Less

By: Barry Schwartz

• Narrated by: Ken Kliban
• Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 1,806
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 1,498
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 1,492

By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

The Tyranny of Pop Economics

• By Darwin8u on 10-28-13

To Sell Is Human

• The Surprising Truth about Moving Others

By: Daniel H. Pink

• Narrated by: Daniel H. Pink
• Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,178
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,504
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,482

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in nine Americans works in sales. Every day more than 15 million people earn their keep by persuading someone else to make a purchase. But dig deeper and a startling truth emerges: Yes, one in nine Americans works in sales. But so do the other eight. Whether we’re employees pitching colleagues on a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders to invest, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others.

Lenghty book with a few solid tips on persuation

• By Gerardo A Dada on 01-21-13

The Story of Lululemon: Little Black Stretchy Pants

By: Chip Wilson

• Narrated by: Chip Wilson
• Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 459
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 402
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 403

The unauthorized story of Lululemon. Chip Wilson’s part in this story comes from the learning of thousands of mistakes. He set the culture, business model, quality platform, and people development program and then got out of the way. Lululemon’s exponential growth, culture, and brand strength have few peers, and it is because of those employees who choose to be great. This book is also about missed opportunity - five years of missed opportunity. Chip was playing to win while the directors of the company he founded were playing not to lose.

Score settling second rate business advice

• By Amazon Customer on 07-13-19

Influence, New and Expanded

• The Psychology of Persuasion

By: Robert B. Cialdini

• Narrated by: Robert B. Cialdini
• Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,023
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,654
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,642

In the new edition of this highly acclaimed bestseller, Robert Cialdini— New York Times bestselling author of Pre-Suasion and the seminal expert in the fields of influence and persuasion—explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings. You'll learn Cialdini's Universal Principles of Influence, including new research and new uses so you can become an even more skilled persuader—and just as importantly, you'll learn how to defend yourself against unethical influence attempts. 

Use the Audible Speed Feature!

• By Sand on 05-30-21

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

• By: Al Ries, Jack Trout
• Narrated by: David Drummond
• Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,055
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,699
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,679

As Al Ries and Jack Trout - the world-renowned marketing consultants and best-selling authors of Positioning - note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if you ignore the laws of physics, especially gravity. Why then, they ask, shouldn’t there also be laws of marketing that must be followed to launch and maintain winning brands? In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing , Ries and Trout offer a compendium of 22 innovative rules for understanding and succeeding in the international marketplace.

Highly recommended, but could use an update.

• By T. M. Castagna on 12-01-15

By: Al Ries , and others

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

• By: Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover
• Narrated by: Nir Eyal
• Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,593
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 3,819
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,784

Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? This audiobook introduces listeners to the "Hooked Model", a four-step process companies use to build customer habits. Through consecutive cycles through the hook, successful products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back repeatedly - without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

Great book, wish the narration was a little better.

• By Todays The Best Day - Dani Davis on 07-21-15

By: Nir Eyal , and others

Publisher's summary

Revolutionary retail guru Paco Underhill is back with a completely revised edition of his classic, witty, best-selling book on our ever-evolving consumer culture—full of fresh observations and important lessons from the cutting edge of retail, which is taking place in the world’s emerging markets. New material includes:

• The latest trends in online retail—what retailers are doing right and what they’re doing wrong—and how nearly every Internet retailer from iTunes to Amazon can drastically improve how it serves its customers.
• A guided tour of the most innovative stores, malls, and retail environments around the world—almost all of which are springing up in countries where prosperity is new. An enormous indoor ski slope attracts shoppers to a mall in Dubai; an uber luxurious São Paulo department store provides its customers with personal shoppers; a mall in South Africa has a wave pool for surfing.

The new Why We Buy is an essential guide—it offers advice on how to keep your changing customers and entice new and eager ones.

• Unabridged Audiobook
• Categories: Business & Careers

Critic reviews

More from the same.

• The Power of Habit
• Do Hard Things
• An Emancipation of the Mind

Related to this topic

• The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends
• Narrated by: Ricco Fajardo
• Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 582
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 526
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 522

Martin Lindstrom, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, harnesses the power of "small data" in his quest to discover the next big thing. Hired by the world's leading brands to find out what makes their customers tick, Martin Lindstrom spends 300 nights a year in strangers' homes, carefully observing every detail in order to uncover their hidden desires and, ultimately, the clues to a multimillion-dollar product.

Fascinating!!

• By Fact addict on 03-08-16

The Art of Innovation

• Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
• By: Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman - contributor, Tom Peters - foreword
• Narrated by: Nick Podehl
• Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 294
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 246
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 244

IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.

This is an old book!

• By EPR review on 01-05-17

By: Tom Kelley , and others

• A Love Story

By: Jonathan Bender

• Narrated by: Jeremy Gage
• Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 135
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 109
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 109

There are 62 LEGO bricks for every person in the world, and at age 30, Jonathan Bender realized that he didn't have a single one of them. While reconsidering his childhood dream of becoming a master model builder for The LEGO Group, he discovers the men and women who are skewing the averages with collections of hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks. What is it about the ubiquitous, brightly colored toys that makes them so hard for everyone to put down?

Be careful if you already like Lego

• By Matthew Center on 03-14-11

Chronicles of a Fashion Buyer

• The Mostly True Adventures of an International Fashion Buyer

By: Mercedes Gonzalez

• Narrated by: Mercedes Gonzalez
• Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 22
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 20
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 20

Fashion is a business of smoke and mirrors, notorious for crushing the souls of most who dare to be part of the industry. Go on a global expedition with New York City-based fashion buyer, strategist, and consultant, Mercedes Gonzalez, as she learns that there is no glamour in fashion and that only cutthroat corporate espionage prevails. From politicking with blood diamond dealers and Russian kingpins to living in indigenous villages, she has relied on her street smarts and fear of her uncle in order to outwit the industry tyrants at their own game.

Very Enagaging

• By Rainbow on 07-31-23

Primal Branding

• Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, and Your Future

By: Patrick Hanlon

• Narrated by: Alan Sklar
• Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 375
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 280
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 279

What is it that made Starbucks an overnight sensation and separated it from other coffee house companies? Why do many products with great product innovation, perfect locations, terrific customer experiences, even breakthrough advertising, fail to get the same visceral traction in the marketplace as brands like Apple and Nike?

Good book, hard to stay interested

• By Axiom Brevity on 11-21-16

Free Prize Inside!

• The Next Big Marketing Idea

By: Seth Godin

• Narrated by: Seth Godin
• Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 163
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 102
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 103

Purple Cow taught marketers the value of standing out from the herd, which is how companies like Krispy Kreme and JetBlue made it big. But it left readers hungry for more: How do you actually think up new Purple Cows? And how do you get them adopted by risk-averse Brown Cow companies? Free Prize Inside delivers those answers and much more.

Another gem from Seth

• By Daryl on 12-29-09

The Glitter Plan

• How We Started Juicy Couture for $200 and Turned It into a Global Brand
• By: Pamela Skaist-Levy, Booth Moore, Gela Nash-Taylor
• Narrated by: Rose Itzcovitz
• Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 92
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 85
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 84

While working together at a Los Angeles boutique, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor became fast and furious friends over the impossibility of finding the perfect T-shirt. Following their vision of comfortable, fitted T-shirts, they set up shop in Gela’s one-bedroom Hollywood apartment with $200 and one rule: Whatever they did, they both had to be obsessed by it. Pam and Gela eventually sold their company to Liz Claiborne for $50 million, but not before they created a whole new genre of casual clothing that came to define California cool.

Elementary, at best

• By Laura P on 09-19-14

By: Pamela Skaist-Levy , and others

Nickel and Dimed

• On (Not) Getting By in America

By: Barbara Ehrenreich

• Narrated by: Cristine McMurdo-Wallis
• Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 1,533
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 962
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 961

This engrossing piece of undercover reportage has been a fixture on the New York Times best seller list since its publication. With nearly a million copies in print, Nickel and Dimed is a modern classic that deftly portrays the plight of America's working-class poor.

Good concept, but poor execution.

• By Marco Forcone on 08-24-04

Overdressed

• The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

By: Elizabeth L. Cline

• Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley
• Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 159
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 136
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 139

Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to fast fashion chains like H&M now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. Retailers are producing clothes at enormous volumes in order to drive prices down and profits up, and they've turned clothing into a disposable good.

Very informative and worth a listen.

• By Suuki on 12-06-18

• The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture

By: Dan Gearino

• Narrated by: Douglas R. Pratt
• Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 43
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 37
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 37

The early 1970s saw the birth of the modern comic book shop. Its rise was due in large part to a dynamic entrepreneur, Phil Seuling. His direct market model allowed shops to get comics straight from the publishers, bypassing middlemen. Stores could better customize their offerings and independent publishers could now access national distribution. In this way, shops opened up a space for quirky ideas to gain an audience and helped transform small-press series, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Bone, into media giants.

A good listen.

• By Amazon Customer on 08-30-20

My Korean Deli

• Risking It All for a Convenience Store

By: Ben Ryder Howe

• Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
• Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 339
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 263
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 267

This sweet and funny tale of a preppy editor buying a Brooklyn deli with his Korean in-laws is about family, culture clash, and the quest for authentic experiences. It starts with a gift. When Ben Ryder Howe’s wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents’ self-sacrifice by buying them a store, Howe, an editor at the rarefied Paris Review, agrees to go along.

Absolutely delightful!

• By Grace O'Malley on 03-19-11

The Wizard of Ads

• Turning Words into Magic and Dreamers into Millionaires

By: Roy H. Williams

• Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 124
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 120

With the knowledge of a seasoned business consultant and the warmth and wit of a natural storyteller, the Wizard will help you to multiply the effectiveness of your advertising, understand the tug-of-war between intellect and emotion, and more.

If you have a hard time hearing don't waste your time

• By Michelle J on 01-09-17

• Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't

By: Kevin Maney

• Narrated by: Dennis Holland
• Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 50
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 28
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 28

In Trade-Off , Kevin Maney shows how these conflicting forces determine the success, or failure, of new products and services in the marketplace. He shows that almost every decision we make as consumers involves a trade-off between fidelity and convenience between the products we love and the products we need.

No Trade-Offs for Reading Trade-Off

• By Joshua Kim on 06-10-12

• The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

By: Rob Walker

• Narrated by: Robert Fass
• Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
• Overall 3.5 out of 5 stars 155
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 56
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 53

Marketing executives and consumer advocates alike predict a future of brand-proof consumers, armed with technology and a sophisticated understanding of marketing techniques, who can effectively tune out ad campaigns. But as Rob Walker demonstrates, this widely accepted misconception has eclipsed the real changes in the way modern consumers relate to their brands of choice. Combine this with marketers' new ability to blur the line between advertising, entertainment, and public space, and you have dramatically altered the relationship between consumer and consumed.

Lets you in on the secret...

• By Jeff on 07-06-08

American Dreamer

• My Life in Fashion and Business
• By: Peter Knobler, Tommy Hilfiger
• Narrated by: Kevin Free
• Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 88
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 77
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 77

American Dreamer brims with anecdotes that cover Tommy's years as a club kid and scrappy entrepreneur in 1970s New York as well as unique insights into the exclusive A-list personalities with whom he's collaborated and interacted, from Mick Jagger and David Bowie to Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. But this is more than just a fashion icon's memoir - it's a road map for building a brand, both professionally and personally.

Reveals a great deal people didn't know

• By LEE on 10-30-18

By: Peter Knobler , and others

• Finding Humor in the Oddest Places

By: Mary Roach

• Narrated by: Angela Dawe
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 571
• Performance 3.5 out of 5 stars 525
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 520

Follow New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach - but be careful not to trip - as she weaves through personal anecdotes and everyday musings riddled with her uncanny wit and amazingly analytical eye. These essays, which found a well-deserved home within the pages of Reader's Digest as the column "My Planet," detail the inner workings of hypochondriacs, hoarders, and compulsive cheapskates. (Did we mention neurotic interior designers and professional list makers?) For Roach, humor is hidden in the most unlikely places, which means that nothing is off limits.

Narrator drove me crazy

• By Ann on 04-23-14

People who viewed this also viewed...

Why People Buy

• The Real Reason Features and Benefits Selling Doesn't Work

By: Greg Nanigian

• Narrated by: Graham Rowat
• Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 14
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 9
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 9

Learn the secret of what really drives sales - and how to give people what they need so they want to buy from you.

Decoded (2nd Edition)

• The Science Behind Why We Buy

By: Phil P. Barden

• Narrated by: Graham Mack
• Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 3
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 3
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 3

If you understand why people buy, you are already one step ahead in reaching out to them effectively with your products and services. Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy offers a groundbreaking exploration into the science of purchasing. The book specifically demonstrates why decision science has proven invaluable to the field of marketing by helping to explain purchasing behaviors.

Great content but no pdf that is vital to this audiobook

• By Vinay on 04-02-24

Brandwashed

• Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy
• Narrated by: Dan Woren
• Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 338
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 290
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 286

From the bestselling author of Buyology comes a shocking insider’s look at how today’s global giants conspire to obscure the truth and manipulate our minds, all in service of persuading us to buy. Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front lines of the branding wars for over twenty years. Here, he turns the spotlight on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars.

The Conspiracy Against Our Subconscious

• By Doug on 10-22-11

The Choice Factory

• 25 Behavioural Biases That Influence What We Buy

By: Richard Shotton

• Narrated by: Simon Cole
• Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 102
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 84
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 83

Before you can influence decisions, you need to understand what drives them. In The Choice Factory , Richard Shotton sets out to help you learn. By observing a typical day of decision-making, from trivial food choices to significant work-place moves, he investigates how our behavior is shaped by psychological shortcuts. With a clear focus on the marketing potential of knowing what makes us tick, Shotton has drawn on evidence from academia, real-life ad campaigns, and his own original research.

Concise & Precise!

• By Mohamed Anwar on 01-20-20

Overcome Shopping Addiction With Hypnosis

• Addiction to Shopping – Shopaholic

By: Benjamin Bonetti

• Narrated by: Benjamin P Bonetti
• Length: 33 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 30
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 22
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 22

Are you addicted to shopping? Do you find it hard to go out for lunch without dropping in to the local shopping facility? Are your debts spiralling out of control because of the number of unneeded items you purchase on a weekly basis? Have others called you a shopaholic? Do you deny the fact that your habit is now becoming a problem within your life?

Pretty amazing.

• By Miranda Scott on 09-12-23

God Against the Gods

• Storytelling, Imagination, and Apologetics in the Bible

By: Brian Godawa

• Narrated by: Brian Godawa
• Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 38
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 38

Brian Godawa, Hollywood screenwriter and novelist, explores the nature of imagination in the Bible. How God subverts pagan religions by appropriating their creativity and redeeming them within a Biblical worldview. Improve your imagination in glorifying God and defending the faith.

Essential reading for all contemplative film buffs

• By Chris Tomlinson on 04-08-19

Shopping Addiction

• The Ultimate Guide for How to Overcome Compulsive Buying and Spending

By: Caesar Lincoln

• Narrated by: Kelly Rhodes
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 63
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 51
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 52

You're about to discover a proven strategy for how to overcome your shopping addiction for the rest of your life. Millions of people suffer from shopping addiction and throw away their personal and professional success because of this issue. Most people realize how much of a problem this is but are unable to change their situation simply because it's been a part of their mind-set for so long.

• By Johanna on 04-30-16

The Year of Less

• How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store

By: Cait Flanders

• Narrated by: Cait Flanders
• Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 2,808
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 2,511
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 2,504

In her late 20s, Cait Flanders found herself stuck in the consumerism cycle that grips so many of us: earn more, buy more, want more, rinse, repeat. Even after she worked her way out of nearly $30,000 of consumer debt, her old habits took hold again. When she realized that nothing she was doing or buying was making her happy - only keeping her from meeting her goals - she decided to set herself a challenge: she would not shop for an entire year. The Year of Less documents Cait's life for 12 months during which she bought only consumables.

Twenty-something coming of age

• By Kate Terrell on 06-23-18

The Science of Selling

• Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal

By: David Hoffeld

• Narrated by: David Hoffeld
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 270
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 237
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 235

Did you know that nearly half of salespeople fail to meet their quotas every year? Or that many of the most common sales behaviors drive down sales performance? In today's fiercely competitive marketplace, you can't afford to lose sales that should be yours. But with so much conflicting advice from self-proclaimed "gurus", how do you know which sales strategies actually work? Leading sales trainer, researcher, and CEO of Hoffeld Group David Hoffeld has the answer.

Misunderstands both Science and Selling

• By Mike A on 04-25-17

Delivering Happiness

• A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

By: Tony Hsieh

• Narrated by: Tony Hsieh
• Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,103
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,385
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,397

In this, his first audiobook, Tony Hsieh - the widely admired CEO of Zappos, the online shoe retailer -explains how he created a unique culture and commitment to service that aims to improve the lives of its employees, customers, vendors, and backers. Using anecdotes and stories from his own life experiences, and from other companies, Hsieh provides concrete ways that companies can achieve unprecedented success.

Delivering Spin

• By Marc L. Mintz on 08-06-10

Positioning, 20th Anniversary Edition

• The Battle for Your Mind
• Narrated by: Grover Gardner
• Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 107
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 94
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 94

An updated edition of the original 1981 text, this 20th-anniversary edition makes available to business and marketing professionals - including tens of thousands of Ries and Trout groupies, worldwide - the work that forever changed the way marketing strategy is done. This new edition features commentary from the authors that offers fresh insight into why “positioning” a product in a prospective customer's mind is still the most important strategy in business, and includes numerous examples of campaigns that followed, or didn't follow, Ries and Trout's thinking.

branding Bible-ish

• By Los on 03-15-24

Made to Stick

• Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
• By: Chip Heath, Dan Heath
• Narrated by: Charles Kahlenberg
• Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,984
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,816
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,812

In Made to Stick , Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits.

Even Better The Second Time

• By Jeremy on 09-05-09

By: Chip Heath , and others

What listeners say about Why We Buy, Updated and Revised Edition

• 4 out of 5 stars 4.1 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 152
• 4 out of 5 stars 4.2 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 133
• 4 out of 5 stars 4.0 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 122

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

very insightful

this was a very informative book things that seem simple in North America are rarely done that would improve a customer's experience and businesses bottom line

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

• GoingGoingGone...

Design Thinking as applied to the Science of

Would you listen to Why We Buy, Updated and Revised Edition again? Why?

Yes. Since it's a very thought provoking book, sometimes the next point is introduced while I'm still letting the last thought sink in. There's so much in it that it can easily warrant a second listening.

What other book might you compare Why We Buy, Updated and Revised Edition to and why?

I remember when Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" came out in the early 70's - and the way it was thought provoking then is similar to how this book is though provoking now. It gets you thinking, teaching you to fish rather than giving you the fish.

What does Mike Chamberlain bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I think he did a great job. Good pace, the intonation kept my attention and it sounded like I was being spoken to, rather than read to. That's tougher to pull off than I think most people give credit for.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I would not make it a film.

Any additional comments?

Just that anybody listening to this book shouldn't be looking for a list of how-to's. The book is written to enable you how to see the ways you can tweak your interface with customers to maximize their enjoyment and desire to pay for whatever you offer if only you realized what they themselves they may not realize. It could be an amusement park, a book shelf, a cup of coffee, or a dog biscuit - but whatever it is, it gets you thinking about what questions you need to ask and what you need to look for in your environment if you want to design spaces that are not only better compared to your competition, but how to do it in ways that could yield greater profits in a rapidly changing commercial environment. It's a book that helps you ask better questions more than being a book about answers.

• Overall 3 out of 5 stars
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars
• Story 4 out of 5 stars

• Donathan Caudill

Good content overall, but a little outdated

The book was originally written in the 90s so it just needs to be updated with consumer behavior from the 2000s.

• Overall 4 out of 5 stars

• lawrence fauntleroy

It’s more history than anything else…

…which I enjoyed. I think if you’re in the retail industry this is not the book you want to pick up first to scale your knowledge quickly.

• Story 2 out of 5 stars

• Jason Baumbach

More a promotional tome for Underhill's company.

The author dedicates more space to trying to land new clients for his company than space for his actual findings.

• Story 3 out of 5 stars

Little outdated but a staple for anyone in retail

Some of the things talked about are a little outdated, but they’re outdated BECAUSE of the methods under hill talks about. This book will always be relevant and is a must read for anyone professionally in storefront retail

• Story 1 out of 5 stars

The author dedicates a whole chapter (>1 h) to explain why eComm will never take off. Really?!

The parts about offline shopping experience are decent. But I was looking specifically for something that would cover online shoppers behaviors. If you’re searching for the same thing, don’t bother buying this book. The only chapter that is dedicated to eComm is Chapter 17. And the only insight you’d be able to drive from it is that the author doesn’t like, doesn’t trust and doesn’t want to believe that there’s future for online sales. Disappointed

• Orleans Lane

good ideas but aimed at large retail storefronts was just looking for something i could adapt for my small retail business

• Maire Howard

Over reaches the author's ability

I debated on how many stars since I enjoyed the first part of the book. The book lost so many stars because of the hubris of the end of the book. If you don't know a subject you should at least get it reviewed by experts in the field before publication. Most of the mistakes the author made were well known at the time he wrote and published the book! Example - the top online companies today have used analytics for decades. The analytics they use are far more sophisticated than the weak suggestions provided by the author. I had to stop a moment and laugh when he talked about Netflix's correlation of zip code and user suggestions. Netflix at that time was already using a far more sophisticated algorithm of correlation of behavior types and user suggestions. This was one of many mistakes on this subject.

• Lorie Christian

Learn How Stores Market To The General Public

My husband and I were recommended this book for a long trip. Neither one of us are into marketing or retail or anything like that. In fact, I am a legal assistant and he is a network administrator. So we were curious why a friend was so enthusiastic about this listen. WOW! We learned a lot and, have since then, listened again several times and turned others on to it. If you ever wondered why grocery stores are basically laid out in the same way, or grouping of items occur the same in stores, this book will answer that and many more questions. I wish this book would get updated every ten years. I would surely buy each revised edition!

Please sign in to report this content

You'll still be able to report anonymously.

• Help Center
• Redeem promo code
• About Audible
• Business Inquiries
• Audible in the News
• Accessibility
• ACX for Creators
• Bestsellers
• New York Times Best Sellers
• New releases
• Non-English Audiobooks
• Latino & Hispanic Voices
• Audible in Chinese
• How to listen
• Listen on Apple Devices
• Listen in the car
• Whispersync for Voice

Jane Vandenburgh

Why we buy - the science of shopping.

He is the founder of Envirosell, a the and consulting firm that specializes in improving retail environments in order to sell more product. His fundamental research methodology is to track customers as they move through book; observe unobtrusively their browsing and purchasing patterns; and take detailed notes of how long why spend in each area of the store, what the touch and the at, what they buy, how review they spend, etc. After more than twenty years of doing this, he has compiled a hugely detailed data base of shopper behavior patterns. Why We Buy is a summary of some of the important findings coming out of that research. The book is divided review three parts. The first part considers the mechanics of shopping: The second part deals with the demographics of purchasing:

The third section of the book tackles the buy of shopping: The book is filled with fascinating insights and statistics shopping come from this 'unobtrusive observation' shopping of analyzing consumer behaviour, and they are buy up in a very readable and entertaining manner. As an example, review the first part of the book Underhill talks about how most retailers do not realize that the 'transition zone' between the outside and the inside of the store - that space just inside the door, where review are adjusting to the why of the place - is very ineffective selling space: We hit the doors and we're inside. Still got that momentum going, too. Have you ever seen anyone cross the threshold of a store and then screech to a dead stop the instant they're inside? Neither have I.

See a Problem?

Good way to cause a pileup. Come over here, stand with me now and watch the doors. What happens once the customers get inside?

You can't see it, but they're busy making adjustments - simultaneously they're slowing down their pace, adjusting their eyes to the change in light and scale, and craning their necks buy begin taking in all there book to see. Meanwhile their ears and noses and nerve endings are sorting out the rest of the stimuli - analyzing the sounds and smells, judging whether the store is warm or cold. There's a lot going on, in other why, and I can pretty much promise you this: These people are not truly in the store yet. You see them, but it will be a few the before they're actually here. If you watch long enough, you'll book able to predict exactly where most shoppers slow down and make the transition from being outside to being inside. It's at why about the same place for everybody, depending on the layout of the store.

All of which means that whatever's in the zone they cross before making that transition is pretty much lost on them. If there's a display of merchandise, they're not going to take it in.

If there's a sign, they'll probably be moving too fast to absorb what it says. If the sales staff hits them with a hearty "Can I help you?

I guarantee it. Put a pile of flyers or a stack of shopping baskets just inside the door: Shoppers will barely see them, and will almost the pick them up. Move them ten feet in and the flyers and baskets will disappear. It's a law of nature - book need a landing strip. Accordingly, much of Envirosell's research on the mechanics of shopping deals with book to do this.

Some insights dealing with the mechanics why shopping that why on this include: Four main segments are considered: Some of review book interesting observations that Book makes here include: Regarding men: Underhill makes the sobering point that many of us will spend more time being old that the time we had being young. It shopping then that store layouts the packaging design will have to change in order to accommodate us aging baby boomers. Store layout, too, will need to be redesigned the larger aisles and ramps to accommodate walkers and motorized wheelchairs. Regarding kids: Most of this section is devoted to really young kids, and there are some fairly predictable suggestions and points raised. He says, for example, that merchandise oriented towards kids has got to be placed at eye buy for those kids - that shopping, about three feet off the floor. He also makes the point that retailers have got to provide for parents who are shopping with kids in tow by providing safe distractions and diversions for those kids, leaving the parents free why a few buy of uninterrupted shopping. Again, the principle that the longer the shopper spends in shopping store the more they will spend comes into play.

The final third of the book is devoted to a discussion of how shoppers psychologically react to shopping environments. Much of this discussion covers and reinforces ground that he dealt with in earlier sections of the book, but there is some additional material introduced. A couple of points book makes here are: Underhill estimates that about two science is the limit of most people's tolerance - after that, they do the slow burn. He recommends a variety of distractions shopping review be place strategically in order review change the the of how much time is being spent waiting. Why We Buy makes for interesting reading if you're a marketer, why probably fascinating and likely essential reading if you're a retailer. Either way, it's an interesting and enjoyable book.

Useful information. All rights reserved.

Comments are closed.

• Counterpoint Press
• "When Grace at the Bliss Cafe Calls" with audio

Huffington Post

• Friday at Enrico's, Don Carpenter's No-Longer-Lost Last Book
• Just Terrific: A Remembrance of James Salter
• Metering to Black: Neal Snidow's Vista Del Mar
• click at this page

Press & Other Media

• critical thinking theory ppt
• Dwight Garner on Pocket History in the NY Times

Purchase books

• order cover letter paper
• Green Apple Books, Sunset District, San Francisco
• Mrs Dalloway's Books
• 8th grade fcat writing tips

This site was designed by Michael Pruess and is powered by WordPress Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS)

A TCI Book Review

THE TCI MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS RATING:

• Google Plus
• In Romanian
• Neuromarketing World Forum
• Subscribe to our Newsletter

Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy (Book Review)

Thanks for dropping by! We love to share neuromarketing news and because you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our Newsletter .

“As long as we continue to ask the same questions and don’t update our mental model for consumer decision making, we will not be able to exploit the powerful insights that decision science offers. This requires a paradigm shift in marketing, not just a change of tools.”

7 Responses to “Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy (Book Review)”

These ideas, along with the neuromarketing agenda overall, is massively uninformed based on the latest brain science.

This books and other like it are sales pitches using simplistic pop(ular) ideas. We have interacted with the author in Linked In groups and the theories are a hodge-podge of neuro and behavioral ideas cobbled together from media headlines.

Here is probably the latest and best model for behavior – it debunks all the ideas in this book – http://wp.me/p167Bf-5rH

What an ignorant and arrogant comment. If you read the bibliography in this book you’d realise that these are not ‘theories…cobbled together from media headlines’, they are well-founded in empirical research. Moreover, the group the author works with collaborates at the highest level with some of the world’s leading neuroscientific institutions including Caltech. I think they might know a tad more than ‘brain molecule marketing’ whoever they are.

Abusive ad hominem personal attacks are irrelevant.

No, these theories and ideas are both unproven, unpracticed and mainly untestable. They skim the surface of brain research and most brain research now is just wrong – as any new science will be. Any attempt to then apply neuroscience in practical ways to clinical setting under medical supervision, let alone business, let alone marketing is just false and a misleading sales scam.

We have interacted wit the author in extended Linked In discussions and the ideas are easily debunked.

For example, the evidence is strong, over ten years, and increasing that there is no such thing as “free will”, decision making, cognitive control of behavior and that emotions happen after the brain directs behavior so are not causal but merely correlated.

Basically, subjective experience is pretty meaningless. Simple logic tells us that if conscious decision making and emotions were important to behavior — we would find it in other animals, of course.

Thanks for your reply. It’s obvious that you haven’t actually read the book. If you had, you’d find that your comments above (about conscious decision-making and emotions) are fully supported.

It is just a simple lie that anything about current brain research can be applied to clinical medical work yet, let alone other practical applications, let alone business, let alone marketing.

This book and the business practices of neuromarketing are deeply dishonest.

So first you claim to debunk all of the ideas in the book despite not having read it, then you posit some ideas without realising that these are actually supported by the book. Now you claim that the ‘business practices of neuromarketing are deeply dishonest’ yet your entity/enterprise name is ‘brain molecule marketing’ – too funny!!

We would love to be proven wrong. Equally, we are glad for any and all to take these ideas uncritically, at face value and spend lots of resources trying them out. We sincerely hope they get people to buy more stuff.

However, we and our clients have dismissed them. after a few years of intensive study, as silly, unformed salesman’s hype. Too bad really – but predictable.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Current ye@r *

Leave this field empty

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Books of the moment:

Looking for something in particular, neuromarketing worldwide.

Neuromarketing BOOK REVIEWS NMSBA Neuromarketing World Forum Neuromarketing Companies: List and Map Map of Neuromarketing Education Neuromarketing online BOOKSTORE

Get the latest news right away

Neuromarketing science & business association, subscribed to:, book reviews:, recent posts on our blog.

• Eye Tracking in Neuromarketing Research
• Eye Tracking Infographic
• Join Today The Neuromarketing Manager Program
• Decoding the Irrational Consumer (Book Review)
• “Neuromarketing Theory & Practice” Magazine – Issue No. 14

Blog posts archive

From our blog:, follow us on twitter.

Find Us on Facebook

Powered by Wordpress.

Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

Star Wars Outlaws story looks better than any Disney SW movie

Before Star Wars was snapped up and fully extrapolated by Disney, we relied on video games, books and graphic novels for Star Wars expanded universe building.

So, the forthcoming Star Wars Outlaws game published by Ubisoft is somewhat of a throwback in that respect. Now we know it’ll be available on August 30.

The new game from Massive Entertainment for PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC is an open world adventure set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Meta Quest 2 is a great buy at under £200

The Meta Quest 2 is a brilliant VR headset with planet of gas left in the tank. You can now grab one for £199 – a £50 saving – at Amazon.

Naturally, amidst the rather tenuous universe expansions currently being undertaken by Disney across multiple timelines, this game is quite an exciting prospect for Star Wars fans.

Ubisoft dropped the new story trailer for Star Wars Outlaws, which is the first ever open world Star Wars game. The new protagonist, a young, female “scoundrel” named Kay Ness, sounds a lot like Han Solo.

At this point in the timeline, Han is frozen in carbonite and hanging around as a trophy in Jabba’s Palace. We see Frozen Han and Jabba in the trailer below. However, it doesn’t seem as if you’ll doing much interacting with other familiar characters from the Skywalker Saga. The new protagonist sounds interesting enough to carry the action and it seems like her pet Nix will be handling tasks for you along the way.

The story trailer description reads: “Explore distinct planets across the galaxy, both iconic and new. Risk it all as Kay Vess, an emerging scoundrel seeking freedom and the means to start a new life, along with her companion Nix. Fight, steal, and outwit your way through the galaxy’s crime syndicates as you join the galaxy’s most wanted.”

You can check out the Star Wars Outlaws trailers below:

You might like…

Best PS5 Accessories 2024: Kit out your console with these gadgets

Best PS5 Games 2024: Must-buy titles for Sony’s next-gen console

Best PS5 Headset 2024: Our top picks for PlayStation headsets

Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He's based in South Florida, USA.  …

Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

Professional conduct

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

Sign up to our newsletter

Get the best of Trusted Reviews delivered right to your inbox.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy › Customer reviews

Customer reviews.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Top positive review

Top critical review

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later., from the united states, there was a problem loading comments right now. please try again later..

• ← Previous page
• Next page →
• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices