Why We Buy (13 page)

Speaking of which, where does the gay shopper fit into this increasingly blurry retail environment? And what differences might there be between what a gay guy or lesbian woman is after versus his or her straight-world counterpart?

Needless to say, most generalizations about homosexual culture are just that—generalizations. There are gay women who feel at home in flannel button-down shirts and khakis, and lesbian princesses who like nothing more than glamming it up on Saturday night. There are gay guys who ego-idealize Brando in
The Wild One,
gay guys who are slobs and gay guys who assemble their wardrobe every morning with the kind of care and attention you don't see outside a West Point plebe barracks. This same wide spectrum shows up in the straight world.

The difference is the gay community has always been a cultural weathervane, with the foresight and instincts and taste to tell us what's in and what's out, what's hot and what's yesterday's news. Where gay culture leads, the rest of us generally follow, as any chiseled, Prada-clad metrosexual would be the first to admit.

At the same time many members of the heterosexual world don't really like to acknowledge this. Straight guys shopping the underwear section come up against a series of crotch-hugging pictorials on the boxes that make them feel as though they have to sneak their new boxer-briefs
over to cash/wrap inside a brown paper bag. They feel embarrassed, but their embarrassment just may spring from the fact these sultry male gym pictures have found their target. Gay or straight, show me a teenage boy who hasn't wanted a six-pack or an aging Generation X guy who hasn't looked in the mirror at his tired-looking eyes, swelling flanks and loss of muscle mass, and I'll show you a retail world that hasn't taken into account the fact that a lot of heteros want to look as sharp and pulled together as a lot of their gay-world counterparts. Thing is, few of them want to admit it or show that they give a damn. It goes against the typical male's self-image to admit he cares.

In general, the retailing environment hasn't made allowances for this schizoid sensibility. Lesbians face the same confusion in the marketplace, except unlike their gay male counterparts, a lot of them have to cross over to the other gender's section to find what they want. The retail world generally creates less leeway for most gay women than it does for gay men. A lesbian of my acquaintance who describes herself as butch has a hard time finding even the most rudimentary clothing items and accessories. It's probably why she hates shopping and does most of it online. Most of what's on display is just too girly—coltish and pointy and designed to seduce. Pants are another big issue. There's rack after rack of low-riders, which aren't her style. Shoes? Another dead end. What she typically ends up doing is drifting over to the men's department in search of basic men's loafers—any style, so long as they're utilitarian and don't make her look like Glinda the Good Witch. Her wardrobe is mostly made up of classic casual clothes—baggy khakis, clothes created for women but designed to look like what your older brother might wear. At work, she'll suck it up by wearing one of the two black Eileen Fisher suits she owns, but if she could spend her days attired in baggy pants and a T-shirt she'd be the happiest person on earth. What I hear through her words is that even though she came out in her early twenties, when she's shopping she still finds herself living a double life.

It's worth noting that a lot of gay women can be pretty square, especially lesbian couples with kids. They're conservative, not politically but socially. Many of them don't like to make a fuss over shopping or the
latest gowns dripping from store mannequins. Like guys, they just want to get the ordeal over with.

Gay men and women already came out once, which was brave. Retailers shouldn't make them have to dive back into the closet a second time. The gay market is real—and the people who pay attention to it will reap the rewards.

But back to the traditional family guy. Remember when the only men who saw babies being born were obstetricians? Today the presence of Dad in the delivery room is almost as mandatory as Mom's. Men are going to have to be accommodated as they redefine their roles as fathers. It's a seismic change that's being felt on the shopping floor just like everywhere else.

For example, almost no man of my father's generation had the habit of loading Junior, a bottle or two and some diapers into the stroller and going out for a Saturday-morning jaunt. Today it's almost a cliché. That's why progressive men's rooms now feature baby-changing stations, and it's why McDonald's commercials invariably show Dad and the kids piling in—sans Mom, who's probably spending Saturday at the office. (Mom won't let them order Big Macs anyway.) This isn't just an American phenomenon, either—my informal Saturday observation of Milan's most fashionable districts detected that roughly half of all baby strollers were being pushed by Papa. Papa likes to drive.

We tested a prototype Levi's section at a department store in Boston, part of an effort to improve the store's appeal to men in their twenties and thirties. We caught video of a young man walking down the aisle toward the section, accompanied by his wife and baby, whose stroller he pushed. They reached the Levi's, and he clearly wanted to shop the shelves of jeans on the wall. But there were racks of clothing standing between him and the jeans, positioned so close together that he couldn't nudge the stroller past. You can see him thinking through his choice—do I leave my wife and child in the aisle just to buy jeans? He did what most people would do in that situation: He skipped the pants. You'd be amazed at how much of America's aggregate selling floor is still off-limits to anyone pushing a stroller. This is the equivalent of barring a large percentage of all shoppers in their twenties and thirties.

Two decades ago it was the rare father who ever bought clothing for the little ones; today, it's more common to see men shopping the toddler section. Clothing manufacturers haven't caught up with this yet, however, as evidenced by the fact that children's sizes are the most confusing in all of apparel—guaranteed to frustrate all but the most parental of shoppers. The day that size corresponds directly to the age of the child is when men will be able to pull even more of the weight for outfitting the kids. It'll be Dad who springs for the outrageous indulgences here, too—the velvet smoking jacket for his son or the miniature prom gown for his daughter.

And when Saturday morning rolls around and Pop goes to pack the bottles and Cheerios and Goldfish and diapers and baby powder and ointment and wipes and all the rest of that stuff, what does he put it in? Not the big pink nylon bag his wife lugs. In fact, he's probably disposed against any of the available options—even a plain black diaper bag, says Mommy. But what if he could choose a Swiss Army diaper bag? How about a nylon Nike one that looks just like his gym bag? Even better, what if he could push a studly Harley-Davidson-brand baby stroller that came with a built-in black leather diaper bag? The whole baby category needs to be reinvented.

Other traditional female strongholds can also accommodate men, but it's got to be on masculine terms. You've got to be aware of the wimp factor. There are many stores where the floors and the walls and everything hanging on them whisper loudly to the foolhardy male trespasser, “Get the hell out of here—you don't belong!” Near my office there's a store that sells dishes and glasses and such, and it's remarkable because I can actually walk in and not feel like a bull in a china shop. Whereas in Bloomingdale's Royal Doulton section, I feel as though I'm back in my grandmother's dining room—and it's the grandmother who scared me.

There are other such places that men would gladly shop—actually want and even need to shop—if only they felt just a little bit wanted. For example, there are more health and grooming products for men than ever. But if you look at how they're sold, you'll see that most men will never become avid buyers.

In the chain drugstores and supermarket sections where these products are sold, the atmosphere is overwhelmingly feminine. Shampoo, soap and other products that can be used by either sex are invariably packaged and named under the assumption that women will be doing all the buying. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The products made especially for men, like shaving cream and hair ointments and deodorant, are stocked in a dinky little section sandwiched in among all the fragrant female goods. No man's land, in other words, so how's a guy to shop it?

The traditional beauty business has always prospered by moving upmarket. Estée Lauder and L'Oreal have persuaded women that dropping a small fortune on a night cream is a worthwhile investment. Not the best approach when you're dealing with the male market. The way for male skin-care products to succeed is through better positioning and carefully chosen words and packaging. There's a huge, untapped market for moisturizing creams and sunblock among men who work outdoors—police, construction workers, cable TV and telephone line installers, road crews. But these guys aren't going to traipse through the blushers and concealers to find them. And they're not going to buy a product that presents itself as intended for women and children. If you went through your typical health and beauty section, you'd think that men don't have skin. But they do, and it needs help.

A good solution might be found, say, at a Harley-Davidson dealer. The company could call its skin-care line whatever they wanted—sun shield, windburn care or human leather conditioner. The important thing is that they give it open-road, fuss-free value, plus a name that sounds like burly shorthand. Like Goop, which gets the grease off your hands, or Lava soap, which takes care of pine sap, it should be marketed as killer guy stuff. If Harley leads, John Deere and Caterpillar might follow, and a real step toward preventing skin cancer will have been made.

Clinique makes a complete line of shaving and skin products for men. But at the very sophisticated Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City, a man has to visit the all-female cosmetics bazaar on the ground floor to find the stuff. It's not even available at the men's store across Fifth Avenue. Who would guess that the shaving cream is
right next to the lipstick? I've no doubt that many women buy shaving products for their men, but that's the old-fashioned approach, not the way of the future. Gillette makes shaving creams for a variety of skin types, and there's no doubt that it's for men. But how is a man supposed to know which type of skin he has? A simple wall chart display would do the trick, but I've yet to see one. I recently visited a national chain's drugstore in Manhattan's Chelsea section, the epicenter of gay life here. Even this store shortchanges men—their section (which consisted only of deodorant, a few hair-grooming products, some Old Spice, a tube of Brylcreem) was jammed into a corner shelf between the film-processing booth and the disposable razors. This store would be a perfect place to create a prototype men's section. Instead, it was the same old dreariness.

Giving men their own products, and a place to buy them, would be a good start. But that still smacks of the health, beauty and cosmetics section designed for women. Someone needs to start from scratch in designing a “men's health” department, where you'd find skin products, grooming aids, shaving equipment, shampoo and conditioner, fragrance, condoms, muscle-pain treatments, over-the-counter drugs and the vitamins, supplements and herbal remedies for ailments that afflict men as well as women. There might also be some athletic wear, like socks, T-shirts, supporters, elastic bandages and so on. There should also be a display of books and magazines on health, fitness and appearance. The section itself would have a masculine feeling, from the fixtures to the package designs. And it would be merchandised with men in mind—the signs would be big and prominent, and everything would be easy to find. The number-one magazine success story of the past decade has been the amazing growth of a periodical called
Men's Health,
which sells over 1.5 million copies a month, more than
GQ, Esquire, Men's Journal
and all the others. If the magazine can thrive, why not the store section, too?

B
efore this chapter begins, may I take a moment to mark the passing of a great American institution and one of the last true bastions (if not actual hideouts) of postwar masculinity?

I'm speaking, of course, of Joe's Hardware. Or was it Jim's? Doesn't matter—you know the place. Creaky planks on the floor. Weird smell of rubber and four-in-one oil in the air. Big wooden bin of ten-penny nails. Twine. Elbow joints. Mystic tape. Spools of copper wire. Drums of waterproof sealant. Brads.
Brads?
Hell, brads, tacks, staples, washers, nuts, bolts (molly and otherwise), pins, sleeves, brackets, housings, flanges, hinges, gaskets, shims, wood screws, sheet metal screws, a calendar featuring Miss Snap-on Tools in a belly shirt brandishing killer cleavage and a power router, and over there—atop the rickety ladder, chewing a bad cheroot, rummaging blindly in an ancient box of two-prong plugs, cursing genially under his stogie breath—Joe himself. I mean Jim.

Whatever happened to him? Dead. How about his store? Dead.

Who killed them? Who do you think?

Oh, those…women! Too fancy to shop at Joe's, am I right? Poor guy stocked everything you could want, but it just wasn't enough. Not the right
color.
Not enough
styles.
The place stinks like
cheap cigars.

Bye, Joe.

It's no surprise that women are capable of causing such tectonic shifts in the world of shopping. Shopping is still and always will be meant mostly for females. Shopping
is
female. When men shop, they are engaging in what is inherently a female activity. (When a man shops he's practically in drag.) And so, women are capable of consigning entire species of retailer or product to Darwin's dustbin, if that retailer or product is unable to adapt to what women need and want. It's like watching dinosaurs die out.

Need more evidence? Two words: sewing machine.

In the '50s, I am told, 75 percent of American households owned sewing machines. Today, it's under 5 percent. So roll over, Joe—here comes Mr. Singer. (In fact, the sewing machine giant has gone into the military weaponry business.) Women once made entire wardrobes for themselves and their families, and kept repairing garments until they had truly earned their rest. Then the past three decades of socioeconomic upheaval happened and women stopped sewing anything more ambitious than a loose button.

One last illustration?

Paper grocery store coupons.

Gone. Whoosh! In 2007, less than 3 percent of all manufacturers' coupons distributed via newspapers, magazines or in the mail were ever redeemed (in response, the coupon industry is making a valiant attempt to move the coupon distribution business online). Women's lives have changed, and the thought of sitting hunched over the kitchen table scissoring away at the
Daily Bugle
suddenly seems as cost-effective as churning your own butter. Oh, there are some pockets of coupon-clipping resistance—senior citizens, the highly budget-conscious and motivated, mostly women who aren't working at jobs all day. But otherwise—outtahere!

Of course, we're all familiar with how men have become better, more caring, more sensitive shoppers, willing to shoulder some of the
burden even of mundane household acquisitioning and provisioning. But let's not forget that this reformation came about in large part because of gentle prompting (if not actual violent pushing and shoving) by women. And let's keep in mind also that while the future of retailing will undoubtedly show the effects of more male energy in the marketplace, for the most part the big shifts will continue to reflect changes in the lives and tastes of women.

But what, as marketing genius Sigmund Freud was moved to ask, do women want from shopping? We speak a great deal of the distinct differences between how men and women behave in stores, but rather than dish out generalizations, let me start with a good example. It's from a study we did for an Italian supermarket chain, and it comes directly from a video camera we trained on the meat counter.

There, we watched a middle-aged woman approach and begin picking up and examining packages of ground meat. She did so methodically, carefully, one by one. As she shopped a man strode up and, with his hands behind his back, stood gazing over the selection. After a brief moment he chose a package, dropped it into his cart, and sped away. The woman continued going through meat. Then came a couple with a baby. The wife hung back by the stroller while her husband picked up a package, gave it a quick once-over, and brought it back to their cart. His wife inspected it and shook her head. He returned it, chose another, and brought it back to their cart. His wife inspected it and shook her head. He chose again. She shook again. Exasperated, she left him by the stroller and got the meat herself. As they walked off, the first woman was making her way through the final package of meat on display. Satisfied with her research, she took the first one she had examined, placed it in her cart, and moved on. My sister complains that her husband goes out of his way to buy tired vegetables. “He doesn't get it. We want to eat fresh ones, not adopt the sad ones.”

What makes women such heroic shoppers? The nature-over-nurture types posit that the prehistoric role of women as homebound gatherers of roots, nuts and berries rather than roaming hunters of woolly mammoths proves a biological inclination toward skillful shopping. The nurture-over-nature fans argue that for centuries, the all-powerful
patriarchy kept women in the house and out of the world of commerce, except as consumers at the retail level.

This much is certain: Shopping was what got the housewife out of the house. Under the old division of labor, the job of acquisitioning fell mainly to women, who did it willingly, ably, systematically. It was (and in many parts of the world, remains) women's main realm of public life. If, as individuals, they had little influence in the world of business, in the marketplace they collectively called the shots. Shopping gave women a good excuse to sally forth, sometimes even in blissful solitude, beyond the clutches of family. It afforded an activity that lent itself to socializing with other adults, clerks and store owners and fellow shoppers.

As women's lives change, though, their relationship to shopping must evolve. Today, most American women hold jobs, and so they get all the impersonal, businesslike contact with other adults they want (and then some). They also get plenty of time away from the comforts of home. And so the routine shopping trip is no longer the great escape. It's now something that must be crammed into the tight spaces between job and commute and home life and sleep. It's something to be rushed through over a lunch hour, or on the way home, or at night. The convenience store industry is a direct beneficiary of how women's lives have changed—instead of a highly organized weekly trip to the supermarket, with detailed list in hand, women now discover at nine p.m. that they're out of milk or bread for tomorrow's lunches, prompting a moonlit run to the 7-Eleven. Catalogs, TV shopping channels and web shopping all have flourished thanks mainly to the changes in women's responsibilities. And the less time women spend in stores, the less they buy there, plain and simple. As they hand over some of their traditional duties (cooking, cleaning, laundry, child care) to men, they also relinquish control over the shopping for food, soap and kiddie clothes. Women may even become more male in their shopping habits—hurried hit-and-run artists instead of dedicated browsers and searchers. Right off the bat, the advantages of the postfeminist world to retailers (women have more money) are offset by some disadvantages (women have less time and inclination to spend it in stores).

The use of shopping as a social activity seems unchanged, however.
Women still like to shop with friends, egging each other on and rescuing each other from ill-advised purchases. I don't think we'll ever see two men set off on a day of hunting for the perfect bathing suit. All our studies show that when two women shop together, they spend more time and money than women alone. They certainly outshop and outspend women saddled with male companions. Two women in a store is a shopping machine, and wise retailers do whatever they can to encourage this behavior—promotions such as “bring a friend, get a discount,” or seating areas just outside the dressing room to allow for more relaxed try-ons and assessments. Stores with cafés on the premises allow women to shop, then take a break, without ever leaving sight of the selling floor.

When you've observed as many shoppers as I have, you realize that for many women there are psychological and emotional aspects to shopping that are just plain absent in most men. Women can go into a kind of reverie when they shop—they become absorbed in the ritual of seeking and comparing, of imagining and envisioning merchandise in use. They then coolly tally up the pros and cons of this purchase over that, and once they've found what they want at the proper price, they buy it. Women generally care that they do well in even the smallest act of purchasing and take pride in their ability to select the perfect thing, whether it's a cantaloupe or a house or a husband. In fact, watch men and women in the produce section—the man breezes through, picks up the head of lettuce on top of the pile and wheels away, failing to notice the brown spots and limpid leaves, while the woman palpates, examines and sniffs her way past the garbage, looking for lettuce perfection. He'll even fail to notice how much the lettuce costs, something almost unthinkable among women. Men do take pride in their proficiency with certain durable goods—cars, tools, boats, barbecue grills, computers. Women, though, have traditionally understood the importance of the impermanent world—cooking a meal, decorating a cake, fixing hair and makeup.

Not that there's anything superficial about the female relationship with consumption. In fact, it's women, not men, who plumb the metaphysics of shopping—they illuminate how we human beings go through life searching, examining, questioning and acquiring and assuming and
absorbing the best of what we see. At that exalted level, shopping is a transforming experience, a method of becoming a newer, perhaps even slightly improved person. The products you buy turn you into that other, idealized version of yourself: That dress makes you beautiful, this lipstick makes you kissable, that lamp turns your house into an elegant showplace.

In practical terms, this all means one patently obvious, overarching thing: Women demand more of shopping environments than men do. Males just want places that allow them to find what they need with a minimum of looking and then get out
fast.
If a male is made to wander and seek—in other words, to
shop
—he's likely to give up in frustration and exit. Men take less pleasure in the journey. Women are more patient and inquisitive, completely at ease in a space that gradually reveals itself. Therefore, they need environments where they can spend time and move about comfortably at their own speed in what sometimes resembles a semitrance state. Our most famous discovery, the “butt-brush factor,” indicates to us that women have an actual aversion to examining anything much below waist level, for fear of being jostled from the rear. This takes in quite a bit of American retailing's selling space. You can't ask a woman (or a man) to bend over and expect that she's going to feel comfortable for more than a moment or two. You can't crowd a woman and think that she's going to linger. Watch shoppers' faces in busy aisles—once they've been bumped a few times they begin to look annoyed. And irritated shoppers do not tarry; in fact, they frequently leave before buying what they came for. Retailers must keep all this in mind when deciding where to sell what.

It's equally true that women can and will steel themselves for a sale they know will be crowded. They'll shop at Filene's Basement in Boston and the Barneys Warehouse Sale, and their hunger for bargains will overcome whatever issues they have with strangers piercing their body bubbles. What we've noted over the years is that a woman's butt-brush radar is also calibrated to respond differently to other females than unfamiliar males. In most of the crowded places where women wade fearlessly, they're jostled, pulled and yanked not by men but by other women.

For instance, department store cosmetics sections require women to sit or stand in one spot while makeup is demonstrated, which can be a problem during busy times. Over and over, our research has shown that women standing at the corner of a counter, where they can wrap themselves around the angle and nestle in a little bit, actually buy at a higher rate than women standing a few feet away along the main stretch of the counter. Some cosmetics departments use counters to create cul-de-sacs, recessed areas that allow shoppers to stand clear of passing foot traffic and browse without fear—we call them catchment basins, and they are successful at inducing women to shop a little longer. As discussed earlier, drugstores sometimes stock unglamorous products such as concealer cream at the very bottom of a wall display—meaning that older women, the shoppers least likely to appreciate having to stoop, are forced to bend low and stick their butts out where they'd rather not go. As a result, less concealer will be sold than if it was positioned higher.

Women's spatial requirements can be seen everywhere in retailing. Airport gift shops, for instance, are typically divided into the “grab and go” zone—near the register, where you dart in for a paper or gum, pay and run—and the “dwell” zone, farther into the store, where gift items are usually displayed. Our research shows that women in these stores gravitate away from the hubbub around the counter and toward the dwell zone, where they feel protected from foot traffic. Many of these stores' architecture features little nooks and crannies created by shelving and racks—perfect cul-de-sacs for uninterrupted shopping. That's how women prefer to shop: within view of the main flow of traffic, but sheltered in sectioned-off areas.

The butt sensitivity of women also establishes a relationship between store design and typeface: The narrower the quarters, the less time a woman will spend there, so the clearer and more direct signs and other merchandising materials must be. All print must be big and high contrast; designers of shampoo bottles, for instance, or any products sold in the close quarters of a chain drugstore, have to heed this reality. We've studied many drugstore health and beauty departments and the result is always the same—women like to study products before they buy, especially if the product is new on the market. In one study, we saw
that 91 percent of all drugstore buyers read the front of a package, 42 percent read the back and 8 percent read the sides. Sixty-three percent of women who bought something read at least one product package. So there's a clear connection between reading and buying. And reading takes time. And time requires space. Here's the breakdown from our compiled database; times are for how long women who made purchases read the packaging first: