Why We Buy by Paco Underhill Page A

plastic baskets. A great basket is one that a customer wants to either buy or steal. In this case, neither applies. Plastic baskets are clumsy and not very attractive, and for guys who don’t see themselves making their way to Grandmother’s house, they’re almost an affront to masculinity. Plain and simple, we just need a better basket.)
    Quite a few malls and stores have added carts with definite kiddie clout. You get the basket on top, while your junior Dale Earnhardt gets to sit in a model racing car below.
    Earlier this year I was reviewing a new prototype Spar store in a train station in Milan, Italy. Spar is a European convenience store chain, like 7-Eleven in the U.S. You find them throughout Europe and in many emerging markets that were once European colonies. I was there with the president of Spar Italy. It was a good store. All across Europe, food-shopping in commuter train stations has taken a massive turn for the better. While the food offerings at Grand Central Station in New York are impressive and very high-end, and the small farmers’ markets that have attached themselves to the BART stations in the East Bay of greaterSan Francisco are a step in the right direction, the food offerings at the Gare du Nord in Paris, Helsinki’s Central Railway Station in Finland and almost any train station in Japan put their North American counterparts to shame. They’re good, affordable and generally fast. In a train station, however—unlike an airport, where we shop because we’re trapped—speed is critical. As a customer, your train is coming any minute, and you need to get in and out. But from the merchants’ standpoint, what’s important is to build the ticket or transaction. Thus, anyone shopping without a shopping bag can only buy so much.
    The president and I spent about an hour walking through the Milan Spar. As I say, I liked the place a lot. It had great vegetables, a juicing operation and a small bakery. Problem was, all of the baskets were clustered by the front door. He asked me what the store could do to increase performance. “Watch me,” I said. I grabbed three baskets and moved through the store. Each time I found someone with their arms full, I offered them a basket along with a nice smile. No one turned me down.
    There are moments in this business when you see the lightbulb flick on in people’s minds. You can kick around simple ideas all you want, but watching one happen in real time brings it all home. I’d seen the president smile over the course of the hour we’d spent together. But at that moment, for the first time I saw him grin.
    As the science of shopping evolves, my number-one worry is that as we fall further in love with technology—with that sensor on the shopping card, with the software package that hooks up to a store’s closed-circuit cameras—merchants get duped into believing that sitting behind a desk staring into a computer screen is an acceptable replacement to getting out on the floor and taking a good look.
    In a very successful bookstore near my office, a pile of shopping baskets sits in the usual erroneous place—in a corner just inside the door. Judging by where the baskets are kept, you’d think that retailers think that shoppers enter bookstores saying to themselves, “Well, today I plan on buying four books, a box of arty greeting cards and a magazine, and so first thing I will take a basket to hold all my purchases.” But common sense tells us that people don’t work that way—more likely somebody walks in thinking about one book, finds it, then stumbles over anotherthat looks worthwhile. In such moments the very heart of retailing lies. For many stores, add-on and impulse sales mean the difference between black ink and red.
    Anyway, when our book shopper stumbles upon a second worthy volume, she then begins wishing she had a basket to make life a little easier. And if at that