Consumer shopping habits are changing. But the right sign, well placed, can bring sales even in a recession, says retail guru Paco Underhill

By Susan Berfield

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American shoppers are complex: They’re excitable, but often creatures of habit; sensitive to influence, but that harder to manipulate than marketers like to subscribe to. And now, as Americans consume more seldom, an already complicated retail pas de deux has become even more in the same manner.

To notice out for what cause stores are responding, I called Paco Underhill. He was one of the first to study how the masses shop, and over the past 20 years or so his consulting firm, Envirosell, has worked for the likes of Best Buy (BBY), Gap (GPS), and Wal-Mart (WMT). Underhill gathers information for clients by dint of. videotaping and tracking shoppers in stores, often for weeks at a time; he collects more 50,000 hours of video every year.

These days, Underhill’s observations take steady added poignancy, to use one of his favorite talk. For a while, he has been powerful merchants that there are no new customers, which is his way of saying that stores must cause to be less ill at persuading existing customers to purchase more. He has also noticed that men more often interfere decisions about what to buy while they’re out shopping, not before. This gives stores some opportunity: If they can compellingly present information about merchandise—following Underhill’s rules, of course—they might exert greater influence on consumers. “It’s all about in-store marketing,” he says. “It’s making things occur to the shopper.”

Recently, Underhill and his trackers have seen more unusual behavior on the part of shoppers that illustrates how hard it has come to be to get them to buy. In better times, whenever people selected an item from the shelf, they usually purchased it. Now the medium footing of time shoppers spend in the aisles is increasing, by around 20%, he estimates, of the same kind with they read labels more carefully. That sounds like it might be a richness portion for retailers. But Underhill says people are more frequently discarding items in other parts of the store, particularly near the cash registrary. “They are trading out or experiencing buyer’s remorse,” he says.

Then in that place is the good sense of selection: Underhill says some shoppers can’cheek by the agency of jowl deal by it, and if the item isn’t a necessity, they’ll just walk away. “Merchants have to take some control over the consumer’s eye,” he says. “Put up a sign that says ‘Our Best Seller’ or ‘Our Best Student Computer.’”

With all of this in mind, Underhill and I depart shopping at Manhattan’s Time Warner Center. Our first stop is Whole Foods (WFMI), a retailer known for severe to entice shoppers by “fit stories” about its products. A large sign over the red kale and rainbow chard is titled “Why Buy Organic.” The account is probably too long for most people to read, he says, but that’s O.K. It’s meant to make shoppers suffer they’re buying something valuable, maybe doing a person of consequence virtuous. We walk by a small sign stuck into a pile of Russian Banana fingerling potatoes that reads “How cute are these?” Underhill loves it. “These are more expensive than Idaho potatoes, so they’re difficult to find creative ways of getting you to trade up or experiment somebody fresh.”

Then he notices a woman by the meat counter. “Sixty-one percent of the time she spends here is after she gives her standing rule,” he says. “While she’s waiting, they want to bestow her…a lesson on the sort of she might spend her riches upon nearest time.” The subject of this particular censure, written on a blackboard, is dry-aged beef. And scrawled on the unfold case glass: “NY Strip Steaks, $11.99 a impound.” “Writing on the glass suggests it’session new,” Underhill says approvingly. “It might be there 24/7, but it looks like someone might have written it 10 minutes ago.”