Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping by the Author of Why We Buy

Additional Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping by the Author of Why We Buy Information

The author of the international bestseller Why We Buy -- praised by The New York Times as "a book that gives this underrated skill the respect it deserves" -- now takes us to the mall, a place every American has experienced and has an opinion about.

Paco Underhill, the Margaret Mead of shopping, has run hundreds of research assignments in malls across the country (and in Tokyo and European capitals). He has visited them, observed his fellow mall-ers, looked long and hard for his car in mammoth parking lots, chatted up the staffers, gone hunting for jeans with adolescent girls and anniversary shopping with guys.

The result is a bright, ironic, funny, and shrewd portrait of the mall -- America's gift to personal consumption, its most powerful icon of global commercial muscle, the once new and now aging national town square, the place where we convene in our leisure time.

Call of the Mall is about desire and buying lingerie, about why the same camel hair coat costs twice as much in the women's department as it does in the boys'. It's about why shoes, handbags, and cosmetics are clustered, why Cartier is next to cut-rate, and why the movie theater is hard to find.

It's about the shopping mall as an exemplar of our commercial and social culture, the place where our young people have their first taste of social freedom, and where the rest of us compare notes. Call of the Mall examines how we use the mall, what it means, why it works when it does, and why it sometimes doesn't.

Visiting the mall with Paco Underhill is a surprising and insightful tour through the American crossroads. Why We Buy changed the way we watch ourselves shop. Call of the Mall will deepen our understanding of how we live, work, play, and spend.

What Customers Say About Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping by the Author of Why We Buy:

You read the story as if you are talking to Paco on your business trip. Paco Underhill has written a great book. It's easy to read, but yet full of valuable information for shopping center developers and retailers. I read the whole book during my flight from Amsterdam to Philadelphia. Please buy this book.

If malls, on the other hand, can make you irritated, tired, annoyed, restless, then this book is About you. It blatantly shows students (et. Beef up the window display. Only we, evidentally, don't do enough of it.This is the perfect guidebook for those in Retail 101. al).

Mall Shopper. One diverting quote on the back cover from an author of another book claims: "Call of the Mall explains why we shop 'til we drop". This is all fine and good, but since I'm usually on the giving end of their profit margins, I note "me, the shopper" is what I thought this book was about.Yet, if the reader craves a pallet load of thin retail selling-ideas, the book might be enlightening and useful. This sketchbook's got designs and details of buying and selling in the mall, but it's just not written for Mr. --Sketchy directives dreamt up by author Underhill not to help make mall shopping a more pleasant, more efficient experience for all of us, but to make life easier for store managers and employees --not to mention to increase the "bottom line" for store owners, mall-meisters and name brand execs. --But take heart.

A genuine "So-what." book. Not exactly. Brighten the lights. Lots more. Change the color layouts. how they might cleverly separate shoppers from their hard-earned money. Put advertising wherever there used to be breathing space. Period.Move those clothing racks.

Well. And more. The author has industrial strength ways and means to brighten up your shopping day.all in the hopes that you'll stay longer, walk further, shop more and leave larger dollar amounts at the mall-side checkouts.For instance, he says that he and his (consulting) company, Envirosell, "have started to track (evidently personal) phone conversations that happen in mall stores.and their apparent effect on buying decisions." [Page 208] (Most interesting). --But all this basic merchandising info does nothing for this shopper; and after awhile, reading about strategies and techniques aiming to reel in more and more of my cash gets really dull if not irritating. Add big graphics to the walls.

Put in a lively tv-screen and add some snappy music. [If this is what shopping has come to, maybe we all ought to just stay home more].Casual, semi-insider store design and point-of-sale suggestions abound (as do the consumers' "So whats," to be sure). It's a conversational-like, easy-read edition that offers the mall weary absolutely no tips for easier buying, no hints on reducing time in lines, no suggestions for smarter spending or faster transactions. information, Underhill doesn't say. We can guess why; but How they gather the (private). Page 176 holds a short passage typical of the entire read: "If you're selling high end goods, the rule is 'the fancier the store, the more definite the line between inside and outside [of the store]'." So. or Ms. Plant a tree outside.

The book says we Do shop. Nothing. Fill up that asile with goods. Get bigger shopping carts. [On page 75, though, is the one revealing line of the book that says it all: "An entrepreneurial approach to the well-appointed restroom could turn even this place into a profit center." (.)].What's in "Call of the Mall" that encourages me into my nearest goliath retail haven. In the end, this mostly understandable, sometimes interesting, quick-to-get-through consultant's plan-book is mostly drowsy reading right from a mall's parking lot, described in Chapter 1.

Underhill's Why We Buy was required reading for my marketing class, and after opening it up, I was hooked by his research and insight into buying behaviors. By contrast, I struggled through 70 pages of Call of the Mall before coming across some of the more interesting aspects of what retailers could do differently. Overall the book presents few compelling insights; it almost feels that he used up all his juicy bits for the first book and really had to dig at the bottom of the barrel for this one.Final word: Don't bother.

Overall, I was disappointed. I have lived in 8 states in both urban (including Manhattan) and suburban settings and the urban (even NYC) shopping isn't all glorious and the mall shopping all tacky, although you might think so after this book. I teach Consumer Marketing and love social science interpretations of 'real world' behavior. He has a company that does this, he must have access to great descriptive stats that would increases both the richness and credibility of his observations. Underhill's opinion that malls are tacky, out-dated and not well designed (very possibly true but not supported by evidence other than his observations). On the plus side, there are some wonderful examples of behavior that we all do or have seen. Underhill strong personal bias toward urban (especially NYC)shopping repeatedly annoying.

Finally, the walk-through-the-mall structure of the book emphasizes its lack of themes or theses. Hence I picked up "Call to the Mall" with personal and professional excitement. It reminded me of my students in NYC who had so little breadth of experience that they thought all the world wished it could be like NYC. However, the is sadly little data to back these up for being more than informed opinions of the author or his companions. The breezy style makes the book fun and easy to read but I found Mr. Not clear what you take-away about understanding shopping behavior, other than Mr. While I understand that he is not an academic, he is a world-renowned expert on descriptive shopping behavior so I was looking for more richness of analysis and insight beyond the examples.

"Call Of The Mall" follows on from the most fascinating, entertaining and useful retail research book ever written, "Why We Buy. It examines how Americans use the mall, what it means, why it works when it does and why it often doesn't work at all well.I have the feeling with this book that Paco Underhill has been reading too much of his publicity and now believes he is a witty, entertaining writer. The Science of Shopping" which is a must read for everyone involved with retail. "Call Of The Mall" is also easy to read, though it has far more of Paco Underhill's opinions and far less actual research to back up his conclusions. So, in some ways it's a bit of a let down. However, for anyone involved in a management role within shopping centres it's still a `must read'.