Analysis Of Malcom Gladwell's 'The Science Of Shopping'

Shopping, a common activity conducted by almost everyone at least once a month, is such a normal subject in our everyday life, one barely puts any thoughts into the potential semiotic explanations behind it. According to the two essays, “The Signs of Shopping” and “The Science of Shopping,” Shopping has significant impacts on one’s self-identification. It is a two way straight, the consumers’ shopping styles can also influence the economic status of the retails businesses.

Malcolm Gladwell’s piece, “The Science of Shopping”, causes his audience to fear retail anthropologists such as Paco Underhill. On the surface, Gladwell appears to write a short documentary of sorts about the manipulation of businesses and stores. Venturing deeper into the story provides the reader with vision of the importance businesses place on their layouts and strategies. Gladwell continues to assure his point that consumers are not mindlessly obeying what retailors want them to do. Store owners are required to accommodate to how their customers behave, and what their target market wants. Gladwell refers to significant moments with Underhill by directly quoting Paco. He also vividly describes different aspects of Paco’s practice.

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,

Whenever I go to Stop & Shop, I tend to take interest in the thousands of products that surround me as I walk down an aisle. The wafting aroma of freshly baked pastries and the sight of cold soft drinks are just some of the things that trigger my appetite for food. Most often, I find myself buying more than what I originally planned on. That’s exactly what the layout of a supermarket tries to make consumers do. Marion Nestle argues in her article, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate”, how supermarkets employ clever tactics such as product layout in order to make consumers spend as much money as possible. She covers fundamental rules that stores employ in order to keep customers in aisles for the longest time, a series of cognitive studies that stores perform on customers, and examples of how supermarkets encourage customers to buy more product. Overall, Nestle’s insight into how supermarkets manipulate people into spending extra money has made me a more savvy consumer and I feel if more people were to read her article, then they can avoid some of the supermarket’s marketing tactics as well.

Malcolm Gladwell is currently a non-fiction writer for The New Yorker. After college, he took a journalism position in Indiana and later took a position in Washington. In 1996, he moved to New York, where he is today. He has written five books and each has been on the New York Times best seller list (Famous Authors). In his first year of working as a journalist for The New Yorker, he wrote, “The Science of Shopping.” In this piece, Gladwell objectively evaluates Paco Underhill’s research within the business industry. Underhill “would have from a hundred to five hundred pages and pages of carefully annotated tracking sheets and anywhere from a hundred to five hundred hours of films” for each experiment that he conducts (99). With Underhill’s determination and research, and Gladwell’s journalistic qualities, this report changes the way anyone views shopping.

Marion Nestle, an author with a couple of published books and a teacher at New York University, dives into the how supermarkets encourage shoppers to buy more than they need in an essay taken from her 2006 book “What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating.” Nestle informs her audience of general shoppers on the topic of how supermarkets are prime real estate so that she can convince the audience that supermarkets do things to make more money by getting people to buy more. Nestle uses rhetorical strategies of having pathos, examples, and facts. Nestle begins her essay by utilizing pathos. She attends to the audience’s emotions by describing the mass amounts of choices shoppers must make when they shop and the stress that comes with shopping.

Intro: I complicate the claim that the surveillance of consumers by retail anthropologists is manipulative and unethical. Although it can be manipulative, it is ethical. "If you haven 't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” (Wu, Chung, Yamat, Richman).

Shopping has become a daily activity which happens a billion times in America and around the world. We cannot imagine how our lives would be affected if shopping was suddenly stopped. Malcolm Gladwell and Anne Norton both write articles about two sides of modern day shopping: how consumers have impacted the retail industry and how the industry influences consumers. In the article " The Science of Shopping," Malcolm Gladwell, a well-known writer and journalist, analyzes the shopping behaviors of customers and how retailers can lure customers; while Anne Norton, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, in

Everyday thousands of retail stores throughout the United States open up their stores in the morning for the sole purpose of attracting customers and selling them merchandise. For this assignment I decided to do a store analysis of the retail giant Wal-Mart. To begin with I will evaluate the store layout and design. Next I will explain the visual merchandising techniques used that Wal-Mart uses. Finally I will discuss the problems and recommendations that I have for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has continually been a leader in the retail industry, and it all starts with the layout of the store.

In Anne Norton’s, "The Signs of Shopping", Anne Norton, a Political Science Professor at the University of Pennsylvania determines the ways in which malls, catalogs, and home shopping networks create our sense of “identity”. In the first part of her essay, “Shopping at the mall”, Anne analyzes the ways in which malls and catalogs “tell you who you are by selling you what they want.” Anne first states what she believes the mall was created to be; she believes it was created to be an impulsive gathering place and place of centralized public activity. Anne then goes on to state how she believes the mall has come to exploit the lifestyles and identities of people, especially those of young women. Anne makes the claim that the mall appears to be

We live in a society where we are watched constantly by social media, twitter, employers and even shopping surveillance cameras. Although each outlet has its different uses for watching, there are pros and cons. Social media may share life styles or events with users with just a touch of a button or click of a mouse. Twitter updates the user with instant news about certain individuals or celebrities and what is trending. An employer keeps a watchful eye on a new employee to make sure they are the right fit for the company or can also watch to make sure their assets are secure. Surveillance is mostly thought of as monitoring assets, but what about the true assets it monitors, the consumer at a store. Consumers are the bread and butter of the store, without the consumer there are no sales, and if no sales then there would be no store. I refute the claim that the retail anthropologists’ surveillance of consumers is manipulative or unethical. In fact, I think the surveillance of consumers can help both the retailer and the consumer. Surveillance can provide an overall good shopping experience for both consumer and retailer. The surveillance videos can show which products the consumer wants and buys, it can help the retailer place good products in good organizational areas, and provide not only the consumer, but the retailer with a good overall shopping experience.

For generations, Americans has been brainwashed by the media to believe that what is displayed on television is the ideal perception of what real beauty have manipulated American citizens of what style looks like. Furthermore, with their many brainwashing strategies, that means more and more consumers spending beyond their budget. Our perspectives have been heavily influenced by what they believe is nice, but can we afford it all? With unrealistic combination of goods in store, plazas, and mall, consuming has become a bad behavior of some. In support of my argument of the “Overspending”, author Gladwell’s article “The Science of Shopping” also argues that stores adjust to fit the needs and wants of the shopper are evidently presented. With that being said, we have no idea when we are being manipulated into unrealistic shopping behavior that is influenced by the way the advertisement is presented in visual sight. Author Gladwell gets a “retail anthropologist” and “urban geographer” named Paco Underhill to give breakdown points of how he helps brand name stores influence consumers into persuasion of buying more. However, most of us fall short of that discipline, while being persuaded to overspend during our store visits.

The current economy has hurt many retail businesses. Every month another retail giant closes its doors. Retail stores which we never would have imagined have gone bankrupt. Retail sales have declined greatly. Major cause of this declination is because many people are unemployed and cannot afford to purchase anything. Retailers are forced to discount prices to increase sales, but discounting still hurts margins. Retailers are assuming a very

The purpose of this paper was to observe the consumers of a retail store of my choice; I chose to observe Victoria’s Secret and Targets consumers, because I myself am consumers of those stores quite often, then to analyze the behavior of the consumers of Victoria’s Secret and Target. Victoria’s Secret and Target consumers differ because of the difference in type of retail they offer and sell. Victoria’s Secret consumers know what they are going to be shopping for women and certain needs or wants they are looking to satisfy. Target consumers shop for any age and any gender,

Shopping is one of the most common social activities in our life. Lingering in one store and another, the customers are looking for the products that meet their requirements and making decisions to purchase while enjoying the leisure time with their families or friends. At the same time, to achieve a better business performance, the retailers try to attract the customers to pay more attention to the products and stay longer in their stores by using various kinds of technologies to surveil the shoppers, such as using cameras to monitor their shopping behavior, tracking their purchased items, and even analyzing these consumers’ background. However, the surveillance of consumers by retail anthropologists is manipulative and unethical