Persuasive Essay On Consumer Behavior

In 1983, Raymond Carver introduced his short story “Cathedral” to the public. The first-person narrative takes place within the narrator’s home, where his wife is waiting upon the arrival of her blind friend Robert. The narrator, however, becomes more concerned about how Robert’s visit will affect him rather than enjoy the situation. Once Robert arrives, the narrator tries to understand the blind man, but he is unaware of what tasks Robert is capable of performing due to the narrator’s inability to “see”. In time, Robert shows the narrator the difference between looking and seeing through illustrations of a cathedral, drawn by the narrator with his eyes closed. “Cathedral’s” narrator exposes readers to anti-heroic views

He believed that by recording on camera how people behave while they are in a store, this would help him understand what influences people to buy a product (Gladwell 2). By deconstructing the typical shopper, he was able to understand what behaviours result in buying and what behaviours do not, and modified the store in order to satisfy the shopping habits of the customer. Essentially, retail geography is the “art of subtly influencing the behaviour of [a] consumer without his or her knowledge” (Purac, Lecture 4). In order to provoke interest in a customer, to perpetuate that interest, and to imperceptibly influence their buying habits, the store must place its products in a way that understands how its customers’

Ever wonder why the windows of stores are captivating that give you that desire to purchase their item? According to Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Science of Shopping,” individual named Paco Underhill studies the behavior of millions of American shoppers by looking at statistics and recorded footages inside the stores. Consumer researcher Paco helps increase the income of the retailers by providing a false sense of public space inside a shopping area by tracing the behavior of shoppers through the lens.

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.

Before I report my results, I must explain how I conducted my observation, or my research methods. To say that I only walked a lap around the Walmart store and left would be far from the truth. I dressed like an average shopper even making sure to grab a buggy. I started my observation in the grocery department, making the transition to the electronics,

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,

Thesis: Although some claim that retail anthropologists’ placement of surveillance cameras for consumers while shopping is manipulative, it is not in fact unethical because their actions are meant for the benefit of the consumers, the benefit of the producers, and most importantly, shoppers are aware of the surveillance cameras.

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

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.

The spatial design of a store may seem like something unimportant, but in it carries the many secrets that get customers coming back. Paco Underhill is a retail anthropologist who’s many strategies to get shoppers to buy more is laid out in Malcom Gladwell’s article The Science Of Shopping. The way in which we walk into a store, look at items, and more are all analyzed to create a perfect shopping experience. By putting Paco’s strategies to use, as well as some of their own, my local Aldi in Hackensack, creates an effective shopping experience.

With technology gaining the ability to intrude upon each individual’s privacy, people are only recently becoming aware of the ways in which this is achieved—while many are focused on, for example, the NSA tapping into his or her phone, the biggest invasion of privacy comes from a system which we often turn a blind eye to: consumerism. In the article “Economic Citizenship and the Rhetoric of Gourmet Coffee”, Mathieu uses Starbucks as an example to show how one company can appeal so strongly to costumers that the consumer turns a blind eye to the company’s ethics. However, in the article “The Science of Shopping”, Gladwell analyzes the methods in which retailers try to appeal to their customers to maximize their sales.

Why spend money that is really needed for other things? Why live uncomfortably? Why be trapped in this hole called a home that belongs to another person? Why not live free and peacefully? When a person rents he or she usually throws away money that could be used to purchase something that belongs to them. Money is not easy to come by so why pay out hundreds toward something that is not benefit to the person paying it out. There is no good explanation for making a decision like this. The best option in a situation like this is to buy a house. Buying a house is a better option than renting an apartment.

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,

Having escaped rule from a tyrannical British government, the United States was founded on ideals of freedom and equality for all people. These fantasies of universal egalitarianism turned out to be merely that: fantasies. American history is full of stories of the oppressed struggling to get the rights they deserve and of the controversy over these issues that consequently ensues. “The Hypocrisy of American Slavery” by Frederick Douglass and “We Shall Overcome” by Lyndon B. Johnson are two speeches made confronting two of these issues. Douglass’s speech, delivered in 1852, condemns the institution of slavery and maintains that slaves are men and are therefore entitled to freedom. Johnson’s speech, on the other hand, was written in 1965 and discussed the civil rights movement. In it, he implored local governments to allow all American citizens, regardless of race, to vote. Despite the significant gap in time between these two addresses, both speakers use similar persuasive techniques, including ethos, pathos, and parallelism, to convince their audience that change needs to be implemented in America.

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