A Summary of “The Science of Shopping”
A famous writer for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has written an article, “The Science of Shopping”, which is based on Paco Underhill’s study of retail anthropology. The intention of a retail store is obvious- that is to attract customers and convince them to perchance as much as they can. There is so much knowledge that we can study, such that how the environment affects people’s thinking. These are tiny details that we don’t usually think about. The reason of how Paco Underhill success is because he notices these details. Details determine success or failure. Paco Undnerhill—a talent and passion environmental psychologist, provides us a new point of view of the science of displaying products, as well as the behaviors of customers The author started his article with an example of a well-designed airport, which putting gift shop on the right, as well as fast food shop on the left, illustrates that whether locates the shops on left or right depends on the way people drive in that particular region. It’s a fact that majority people will walk to their right while going into a retail store, due to most people are right-handed. This phenomenon is called Invariant Right.
After that, Gladwell introduced Paco Underhill, the main character of this article. Paco Underhill is an environmental psychologist, who founds a market research and consulting company called Envirosell. Environmental psychologist is a person who studies about a specific aspect of psychology, which based on the idea that our surroundings have impact on our behavior, to build man-made environments to make them convinced to retail purpose. He is a very practical person, as the author described in his article. He dressed casually and usually does a lot of experiment instead of studying for the theories.
Underhill believes that the faster people walk the less will they notice their surroundings. He does not suggest his clients to display anything valuable...
Cited: Gladwell, Malcolm “The Science of Shopping” Signs of Life in the USA, 6th edition.
Editor Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomom, Bedford/ST.Martin’s,
2009. (pp93-100) Print
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