A few months ago I read The Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill.  I’d had the book around for several years but had never gotten to it.  My interest in shopping is mostly intellectual.  Finding a bargain or the perfect thing does not thrill me, although I can see that it has that effect on many people.  I have spent plenty of time in malls with my family while they shop and sometimes when I can get into an anthropological mind set I quite enjoy it.

Back to the book.  Underhill is a retail consultant and he has strong opinions about how shopping works.  It appeared to me that he had an urban persons sense of superiority to suburban shoppers.  What pleased me was the book’s collection of good ideas about how to improve the mall.  I’ve listed a few below:

• Improve the public restrooms.  have companies like P & G sponsor them.
• Abercrombie and PacSun represent tribes.  At the mall the adult male tribes have no place.
• Stores need to work hard on “jogging the mental shopping list of every passerby.
• One of the purposes of kiosks is to create “laudable crowding.”  The kind that gets the bargain hunters juices flowing.  “Impenetrable crowding” is to be avoided.
• “Back in the days before cars the perfume counter was a bulwark against the stench of horse manure in the street.”  Why is it still at the entrance to a department store?
• Make the outside look more appealing.  Malls are built by real estate developers who think there customers are retailers not consumers.