Salvation through shopping
| Now, Paco's not like that. Paco knows how I think. And he knows so much about shopping, he could write a book on it. In fact, he has "" two of them. Paco Underhill's first book Why We Buy was published back in 1999 and was a delightful expose of the shopping habits of Americans. This time, he turns his attention to the "geography of shopping" at that mecca of American shoppers, the mall. |
| Malls are Paco's old stamping grounds. Like he says in the book, he knows his way around some 300 malls around the world. But then, as a "retail anthropologist", it is part of Underhill's job to visit malls and study shoppers. |
| The retail consultancy he founded Envirosell, works with merchants, marketers and retail bankers to understand "the interaction between people and products, and people and spaces". |
| Call of the Mall is written as a walking tour around one of the US' biggest malls. Underhill has an easy, colloquial writing style that effortlessly blends facts with humour. |
| As he walks us through the mall, he gathers along shoppers so we can live their experience "" the young woman who wants jeans, the man who needs to buy jewellery for his wife and giggly teenagers who just want to try on stuff. |
| Along the journey, Underhill covers almost every square inch of the mall and offers suggestions "" use the rest rooms to promote home products, allow more goods to spill over to the hallway, tilt the hangers so shoppers can see garments without tilting their heads... |
| Underhill understands the importance of malls "" they're the logical continuation of an ancient marketplace tradition that goes back to the Greek storas and the bazaars and souks of the Old World. |
| The continuation, but not the conclusion. Malls in America are like the dinosaurs "" a dying breed. "I suspect there was a fundamental flaw in malls from the very start, something that virtually guaranteed that their growth cycle would last just a few decades." |
| The evidence "" provided by Paco himself "" doesn't quite support that: malls currently account for 14 per cent of all US retailing (excluding cars and gasoline): about $308 billion in annual sales. No figures are given for year-on-year growth, or dips in sales, or growth of competitors "" nothing to substantiate that rather sweeping statement. |
| As you can see, my delight at finding a kindred spirit hasn't blinded me to Paco's faults. Some portions of Call of the Mall read like an advertorial for Underhill and the retail consultancy he founded. |
| And scant attention is paid to the changing times: malls may have been places where parents dropped off their 12-year-olds to spend the day "" what responsible parent can do that now? And more women in the workplace has changed the mall trade forever "" but there's little analysis of that. |
| The rants against malls is the jarring note throughout the book. There's a sly suggestion that malls are racist; more openly, Underhill accuses them of excluding the poor and killing the small retail store in the US. |
| When America moved from the city to the 'burbs, the shops followed. They organised themselves into malls and next thing you know, the traditional retail structure collapsed. To quote Underhill, "Malls were the Godzillas of shopping." |
| So, what would be Underhill's ideal mall? It would be an attractive building that hints from outside about what's available inside; a place where you can check your coat; where you don't have to stop shopping when your arms are full; and where you can park your car easily "" and find it just as easily when you're done. That's a Utopian dream, he concludes. |
| Not really, Paco. Those 300 malls you talk of didn't include any in India. Decent exteriors? Our malls aren't too ugly "" and the glass windows give you a sneak peek at the goodies inside. Parking attendants? We've got them. A place to dump your belongings at the store entrance? |
| Ditto "" the friendly security guard at the entrance will not only relieve you of your burdens, he' ll give you a token so you can easily retrieve them when you're ready to leave. |
| But then, this is not a book really relevant in India. Call of Mall is an eye-opener about the shabby state of America's malls and sounds a death knell for that mode of retail. |
| That's in the US. In India, this book is ahead of its time. Right now, we're at the crest of the retail wave. Malls are opening even as I write this. That's much like the boom years (the 1970s and 1980s) in the US, when a new mall opened somewhere every three or four days. |
| So, as far as Indian developers and retailers are concerned, Call of the Mall can serve as a combined guide of how not to do business as well as how to woo customers. |
| But even if I'm not the target reader, Paco has opened my eyes to how malls draw us into the spend, spend, spend culture. So, have I wised up? Will I now be more wary before buying? Well, no. But I will be the best-informed pigeon the malls have ever plucked. |
| CALL OF THE MALL Paco Underhill Simon & Schuster Price: $18.75, Pages: 227 |