Popular Culture At Francesca 's A Boutique With Dainty Clothing And Fashionable Jewelry

To be successful in a capitalistic government, you must be willing to step on the heads of those who are below you, and claim their successes as your own. Advertisements within our capitalistic culture act as a way to force the customer into buying what the corporate overlords want you to buy. Anne Norton, author of “The Signs of Shopping” is a heavily published author, and has earned many awards in her field. In her essay, she explains how businesses use advertisement techniques to increase the profits in a retail store. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “The Science of Shopping” is a staff writer for the New Yorker. In his essay, he explains how Paco Underhill, a retail expert, taught many Forbes 500 companies how to create more opportunities to up-sale to their customers. Norton shows how malls and other shopping outlets only want one demographic to shop in their stores, and Gladwell shows how stores utilize their internal structure to make more money. Both utilize a negative tone toward the business practices shown in the articles, and demonstrate the manipulation of the consumer with the usage of imagery within advertisements to show that capitalism is unethical.

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.

“Outlet shopping is perhaps luxury’s greatest ploy to get its goods into the hands of anyone and everyone,” (Thomas, Pg. 246). “But outlet shopping is the antithesis of the flagship, the antithesis in fact, of luxury itself.” (Thomas, 2007. Pg. 247) Columnist Karen Heller explained to Thomas after visiting Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in New York, “The clothes were marked down, picked over and repeatedly pawed, the opposite of how they were originally displayed. Their power to enchant seemed minimized, even at a third the price, smashed together like produce in a storage hold.” Thomas explains how luxury merchandise is purely just that, leftover “luxury” products: overproduction. No longer does luxury embody the experience of pampering nor does it signify class and wealth. Some

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.

Target’s business-level strategy is one that does not strictly focus entirely on one plan to gain a competitive advantage over competition. It encompasses various strategic and meticulous planning and decision making that is implemented in order to position the company at the top of the retail industry. With competition from the likes of Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, and Costco, Target uses several clever and “out-of-the-box” ideas to attract consumer attention and ultimately increase market share within the industry. Most of the company’s ideas centered more on the differentiation of products and services provided to customers than lowering prices. For quite some time, the company’s plan was to not compete head-to-head with Wal-Mart in terms of lowering prices but instead to provide their customers, who they identify as “guests”, with a special experience every time they visited a Target location. One idea that was implemented was to market and sell upscale, trendy clothing and unique merchandise at discounted prices.1 This strategy, known as the “cheap-chic” strategy, focused on providing good quality clothing from various well known designers and fancy products from high-profile manufacturers for prices lower than their competition. This plan was vital because it began essentially began the concept of customers referring to Target as “Tar-zhay” which according to Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan, who are university professors, as a “connote its trendy sensibility”. Target

Helen’s is an upmarket fashion boutique store in Sydney’s east. Falling sales have been reflected by surveys that reveal consumers view the business as outdated and no longer relevant to consumers’ needs. Strong competition in the area has placed considerable pressure on pricing. The business’s target market, 50-65 year old females, no longer dominated the now younger demographic character of the area.

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

Marshall Field’s designed a personal shopper assistance program called Tip to Toe shop (107). These assistances helped put together an entire outfit, with pieces collected throughout the store (107). Shoppers didn’t even have to be in the store to benefit from this program (107). One customer was so pleased with her shipped ensemble, that she invited her personal shopper to her husband’s inaugural ball (107). The staff would also help customers with a short budget, find good quality attire that was not couture (105). In result, shoppers benefitted largely from the staff at Marshall

In order to generate astonishing revenue, Mouret’s Ladies’ Paradise employs techniques to create spontaneous desire by playing on customers’ sense of sight, which would help women, who make up the majority of department store customers, realize their independent desires for femininity. The first thing one sees when one walks into a brightly lit department store is the displays. In an appeal to his customers’ sight, Mouret throws brightly colored scarves in heaping piles on a display in the front of the store. According to Elaine Abelson, “Subtlety was not an attribute of merchants in the late nineteenth century. If there was color used, it appeared in massive displays” (44). Such flamboyancy attracts women wishing to release their own creativity, suppressed by the male-dominated society. The lack of harmony in the displays portrays Mouret’s belief “…that customers should have sore eyes by the time they [leave] the shop”

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.

Consumers have certain behavioral tendencies when faced in certain situations. In Why We Buy, the author Paco Underhill details certain behavioral characteristics people tend to have in different types of retail stores. Many consumers don’t think about what their actions mean when checking out or buying products. But to Mr. Underhill, the gender of the person, the people they’re with, the amount of times the person touches an object, the amount of time spent on checking a particular product, the time they came in, and the time they leave, all factor into a database to determine different behavioral trend consumers have. It is these trends that they find in order to correct a problem a store or retailer didn’t know they have to increase sales and create a better flow in the store environment.

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,

To my surprise there are also hints of Laissez-faire. (Devil; 00:16:14) When Miranda asks Andrea on her first shift to buy 10 to 15 skirts from Calvin Klein, she doesn’t specify the type or design and leaves her to figure it out herself. This is a lot of responsibility given to someone who she knows has no experience in the fashion industry.

The recent recession has hurt the entire retail market and regaining profits will be a constant challenge for the entire industry. In order to remain competitive, Ann Krill states,” value and versatility have become very important. She needs an incentive to shop.” (Hymowitz, 2012) Ms. Krill goes on to say,” I think in uncertain economic times, value becomes more important...” (Hymowitz, 2012)

With concern to 26 to 45 years old consumers, we believe that a personal shopper service and made ​​to order service might be useful solutions in order to have their loyalty giving them specific services that only luxury brands do. In fact, that way they can get the most out of their luxury buying experience. To finish, we also suggest the creation of events during which the can purchase new collections in advance, generally the day before the collections are officially out in stores.