[Resource of the Day] – Why We Buy

Book: Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping
by: Paco Underhill
Website: http://www.envirosell.com/

My recent article on consumer behavior has led me to start reading through some books on the subject. And while this might not seem to be an extremely important topic for a small publisher to consider, I’d suggest that understanding the way consumers examine products is an important consideration when a publisher is trying to determine how best to package a product or how much support to give to retailers.

Paco Underhill is a peculiar sort of marketing researcher — instead of gathering data from polls, he goes out into retail stores, installs hidden cameras, and has members of his field team tail customers and take detailed notes about the manner in which those customers shop. Over the last few decades, he’s developed a system that he calls the “science of shopping.” Personally, I’m not certain that his methods are actually scientific; observation techniques can contribute to science, but many of the recommendations Underhill makes to his clients in the book are based on his desire to improve outcomes rather than his desire to discover if those outcomes are truly effective.

But the book raises some interesting points, and I won’t discount what Underhill suggests merely because his techniques aren’t scientifically sound. Much of what he relays is anecdotal, explaining the layout of a store and the challenges it faced. A mall-based drugstore, for example, had its sodas located in coolers in the back of the store, causing teenaged mall employees to rush through the store during their breaks and tear down a central aisle where older shoppers would often stand and examine pain relievers. Though the product was convenient and visible, the constant flow of fast-moving teens made the older shoppers uncomfortable, and resulted in low sales for these pain relievers. Once the pain relievers were moved elsewhere, they attracted fewer customers, but saw greater sales since the customers were more free to take their time selecting and comparing products.

Underhill’s book is full of this sort of story, and it’s easy to see that he has developed an intuition for understanding consumer buying patterns. One of the things I’ve taken away from reading the book is that the approach many consumers take towards buying goes against the practices some publishers like to follow. And that’s what I’d like to discuss.

Underhill is a big believer in the tactile quality of products — consumers like to touch products as they examine them, as if they have some instinct that the products they want to buy will feel right. Surprisingly, customers don’t just touch clothes and towels — they’ll pick up just about any item as they consider it, hold it, look it over, and then either put it in their basket or back on the shelf once they’ve made a decision. Underhill says that this is a good thing, and that the longer customers are allowed to shop, the more likely they are to buy something. Similarly, the easier it is for them to examine their alternatives uninterupted, the more likely they are to make a choice.

The implications of this for publishers should be quite obvious. Books should always be easy for customers to pick up, flip through, and examine. Some publishers insist on shrink-wrapping books so that they can include pack-ins, like bookmarks or DVDs. But the truth of the matter is that customers hate shrink-wrapped books. They want to be able to pick them up and look through them so that they can make sure they’re getting the right thing. Most customers don’t really care about the pack-ins; they don’t use them, and they don’t see them as being valuable. They’d rather be able to flip through the book.

Book covers often also have review quotes on them, especially on the back cover. But publishers should ask themselves if these review quotes actually mean anything to the readers. Sure, it looks nice to post nice review quotes from a half a dozen reputable sources, but the real reason consumers are looking at the back of a book is because they want to see what the book is about or, if it’s non-fiction, what it will tell them that alternative titles won’t. The front cover, likewise, should have something to do with the content of the book. A lot of mass market paperback books look exactly the same, and it’s clear that there’s not a lot of artistic effort being put into making the covers serve the consumer. Often, books with memorable titles, striking covers, and great back cover design wind up being strong sellers. This is not an accident.

And while I haven’t seen hard data on this, I’d be willing to bet that books with smooth, glossy covers are more likely to sell than those that feel like they’re wrapped in cheap construction paper. Experience has taught me that consumers will tend to buy the book with more pages if they’re faced with two alternatives that are otherwise the same in content, but I’m going to guess that most will go with the book with the most durable spine if they’re comparing two books that are 400 pages or more. There’s just something about cheaply bound paperbacks falling apart that makes consumers willing to sacrifice page count for quality.

Underhill also discusses something that many retailers seem to have figured out over the last few years — the idea that the entrance to the store serves as something of a “landing zone,” where customers zoom in and slow their pace as they adjust to the store. As customers enter a store, they almost always veer to the right, and they rarely notice anything directly at the front of the store. Retailers have gotten good at using this zone to showcase their feature titles and their bargains, but this can come to the detrminent of publishers who are doing in-store marketing displays or participating in endcap promotions. After all, this “net” at the front of the store can capture consumer impulse purchases, preventing them from making their way back to a genre section and finding a small publisher’s title.

As I’ve said in other pieces, I’m not certain that it’s cost effective for small publishers to participate in these programs, since the money it costs to be featured in stores can be more effectively put into online promotional campaigns. But what I would suggest is that it’s worth spending the extra money to get titles featured up front, just as it’s good to get clearance merchandise into those bargain sections. I know that whenever I go to Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Books-A-Million, I generally see the bestsellers, features and bargains before I see anything I actually came in for. That means I’m much more likely to pick up one of those books first.

Publishers can do one more thing to influence retail shoppers – they can make their spines easy to read. Shoppers have a tendency to gloss over titles they can’t read, even if it’s the title they’re looking for. Sometimes, logos look really good on spines, but often, it’s best for spines to have simple, readable lettering that shows up easily while customers are scanning the shelves. Remember that only the most popular books and authors will get faced out, because they often write so much that customers won’t be looking for specific titles. But often, a small publisher will be producing books that customers are looking for specifically. So making them easy to find on shelves by using big, easy-to-read letters will make customers more likely to immediately pick the books up and buy them without a second thought.

It’s all good stuff to be thinking about. Publishers often don’t put a lot of thought into how their books are perceived at the retail level, but it’s important to consider early on.

As a final note, Underhill’s book says that online sales will never replace brick & mortar sales because consumers really do like the experience of shopping and being able to touch and experience items they’re considering. The book was written in 2000, when this sort of viewpoint seemed a little more relevant. Now that it’s 2008, what do you think about this?

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan