Posted: May 13th, 2010 | Author: Thomas Attila Lewis | Filed under: Book Review | Tags: consumers, market intelligence, Paco Underhill, retail, Science of Shopping, services, shopping, Why We Buy | No Comments »
"Why We Buy - The Science of Shopping" by Paco Underhill
Paco Underhill’s “Why We Buy – The Science of Shopping” was first published 11 years ago and everything in it still rings true today. Let me tell you who this book is for: anyone who is in charge of or needs to think about creating a space where human interactions take place. The title byline, “The Science of Shopping”, is a bit misleading as it isn’t strictly about the sale of merchandise, but the dispensing of services, the exchange of information, a location where human beings go to in order to experience or facilitate a transaction, be it online or in-the-real-world.
This book is a mandatory read for retailers, hospitality industry folks, people who dispense services from their own locations, or even people in charge of setting up tradeshow/convention booths. When creating these spaces, too often the business is interested in what they want to get out of what will happen in the space: money getting handed over and getting the “customer” in and out of the space as quickly as possible so that more transactions can take place, thus maximizing the efficiency of their investment. Underhill’s approach is to invest in the space so that the “customer” gets maximum benefit from the experience.
In our free-market system there is one rule that is still paramount: the customer is always right. At your trade show, you might think that your primary purpose is to tell as many people possible about new feature X in your product but if the people who come to your booth are interested in finding support for your legacy system you will serve them best by answering their needs as quickly and comprehensively as possible _then_ you can ask for their permission to be shown a demo for your new feature. If you have set up your booth/retail space/etc. to execute your needs (your new product, your promotion, etc.) you will fail.
It seems like common sense but Underhill has filled his book with countless examples of common sense failures that may not have been so obvious when the company/organization first set up their environment. From gas station chains to newsstands to the Gap to banks in Brazil – Underhill looks at the products, the services, the companies, the customers, and the environment to figure out what works, what doesn’t and why. Almost all the examples are remarkable although by the end of the book I was a little “oversold” on Underhill’s company, Envirosell, which he mentions far too often.
So what is it with the “updated and revised” edition? Underhill attempted to address some of the complaints that he was lambasted with back in 1999. Unfortunately I don’t think he responded very well to the complaints that primarily focused on his assessment of online shopping. I think we get it, online shopping is not ideal and very well might never be for a wide variety of products and services – you can’t taste, smell, or feel via the web and thus, the experience is a poor one compared to the possibilities of going into a retail store or service boutique. Underhill can’t seem to let go of this and it’s detrimental to his book. The brick and mortar facets of a company need to integrate well with online access and services, it’s that simple – we don’t need to hear any more about why online stinks compared to a real-world experience.
The rest of the book is fantastic, however, so do not let Underhill’s “Internet” chapter interfere with your enjoyment of it or miss out on an opportunity to learn a lot from someone who has mastered identifying and correcting problems with transactional environments.
Posted: April 18th, 2010 | Author: Thomas Attila Lewis | Filed under: Book Review | Tags: Book, Book Review, Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker, What the Dog Saw | No Comments »
What the Dog Saw
We’re big fans of Malcolm Gladwell’s work and think that anyone who is looking for something interesting to read should pick up his other books:
The Tipping Point,
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and
Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell has a knack for identifying different perspectives on popular topics, thoroughly investigating them, and positioning them without too many judgements.
It’s not that I agree with everything Gladwell comes up with, I particularly had some issues with Outliers, but I don’t read Gladwell to subscribe to a worldview, I read his work to become more informed and entertained at the same time. Is there a business application for every chapter of every book of his? Absolutely not, but I enjoy how his writing jogs my mind and that’s the point.
Let’s be clear that What the Dog Saw and other adventures is not new territory for Gladwell, it’s a republishing of “the best” of his New Yorker essays from 1996 to 2008. We’re avid New Yorker readers but there were several pieces in the collection that we had missed and felt fortunate to have a chance to read them, including “The Ketchup Conundrum” (why is there a market for dozens of mustards but only 1 or 2 ketchups?), “Million Dollar Murray” (why problems like homelessness should be solved and not just “managed”), and “The Art of Failure” (why some people choke and others panic and the difference between the two). It was also great to get reacquainted with pieces like “What the Dog Saw” (a profile of dog-whisperer Cesar Millan), “Something Borrowed” (what is plagiarism), and “The Talent Myth” (are smart people overrated and how smart are they anyway?).
With excellent profiling and background research, Gladwell gets defining quotes from his subjects, from FBI serial killer profilers to Enron executives. Gladwell excites the reader by artfully wending a path to points of realization – Eureka moments founded on fact and interview. Perhaps What the Dog Saw is best as an introduction to Gladwell’s style, with no essay much longer than 20 pages, if you aren’t engaged with a particular subject you know that it will end soon and you’ll be on to something else. If you are still leery of jumping in, keep your eyes peeled for another Gladwell essay in an upcoming issue of the New Yorker. They frequently place excerpts, if not the entire piece, on the New Yorker website.
Posted: January 16th, 2009 | Author: Thomas Attila Lewis | Filed under: Book Review, analytics | Tags: Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte, Presentation Zen, presentations, RTC, slide:ology, Springfield Tech | 4 Comments »
I December I did a presentation about using web analytics for organization success. The presentation ended up being about 90 minutes long, about 1/2 hour longer than I wanted to but as I do these more often I know I’ll trim the content down to what matters and figure out how to communicate on fewer points more effectively.
I had been trying to do more straightforward and inspiring presentations throughout the year, mainly presenting my analytics findings as well as the performance of blog content created by our engineering staff. I think I did pretty well on those but those were much shorter in lenght, around 25 minutes maximum. To adopt a new attitude about presentations I read Garr Reynolds’ excellent book, “Presentation Zen”, which I hightly recommend to anyone in business. “Presentation Zen” is not just about presentations, it illustrates a philosphy towards information, sharing, transparency, and maybe even, life.
After reading “Presentation Zen” I was really on a roll so I decided to read Nancy Duarte’s “slide:ology”. Duarte is best known for her work in helping create Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” presentation. “slide:ology” is beautifully put together – great use of empty space, nice colors and typeface, but it is a huge project to read this book. The problem I had with “slide:ology” is that it tries to do everything:from technical particulars of slide design to color palettes and texture options, from a primer on font and typeface design to animation. Each of those topics deserve their own books so I felt that “slide:ology” doled out enough information to make you dangerous but not effective. The simplicity of Reynolds’ approach vs. the noise and volume of “slide:ology” made my favorite very obvious.
This post isn’t meant to bash Duarte, I’m sure there a lot of people who have enjoyed this book very much, but in retrospect I should have taken what I learned from Reynolds and ran with that. Reading more took away focus from devoting the time my presentation needed. The first 1/2 of my presentation was great but I just ran out of time and ended up with more text on my slides than I wanted which meant I spent more time talking about each slide which slows everything down and can get boring. When I gave the presentation and found myself in that situation I cut back on what I said and asked if I could go on unless there were questions, this kept the pace going a bit better.
When doing a presentation there is a degree of paranoia and there is a lot of self-criticism after the event so I’m probably harsher than necessary. I think it went well and I can’t wait to do another one. I gave the presentation to the Pioneer Valley Regional Technology Corporation on December 5th at the Springfield Technical College. When the presentation was over, a representative from Springfield Tech asked if I could expand the presentation into a daylong or multiday course and I’m developing it to that end now. I’ll post more as I find out where it’s going. If you have any recommendations on developing coursework, I’d love to hear them.
Posted: November 8th, 2008 | Author: Thomas Attila Lewis | Filed under: Book Review, Uncategorized | Tags: McCain, Obama, Seth Godin, Squidoo, Tribes, Triiibes | No Comments »
I received an advance copy of Seth Godin’s new book “Tribes” early last month and read it before attending a semi-private dress rehearsal of Godin’s new presentation. I’d been priveleged enough to see three variations of his marketing/business/evangelist presentation, something that Godin had worked on for about seven years, finely honing down his delivery and the 110 slides used in the presentation.
Seth Godin and Tom Lewis at Seth's Forbes Gallery dress rehearsal
The dress rehearsal was held in the Forbes Gallery in New York City and there were about 25 invitees in attendance. Godin explained that he had expanded the slideshow to almost 250 slides and then he just jumped into the presentation. The theme of the presentation was leadership and the many points he brings up in “Tribes” were echoed – but what was great was that nothing was verbatim. Godin doesn’t parrot his book or his blog, his presentations are as specific as the moment and place that they occur. Godin has created his own tribe and actually probably even more than one of them (blog readers, book readers, Squidoo members, Triiibes.com members). The openness, transparency, and honest of his asking for a “safe” place for him to test out what is a big part of the job he has created for himself, is what his tribe is all about – leading by example.
“Tribes” is another beautiful little book by Godin, 150 pages of examples, principles, and inspiration. Buy one or more and pass them around. Godin’s previous books evangelised innovation, building marketing into every aspect of a business, respecting customers, etc. “Tribes” is about how to step forward in business and in life.
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The election this past Tuesday was the story of the battle of two tribes. Barack Obama’s tribe won because it was an open and honest tribe that was true to itself. From the way it gathered campaign contributions to how it messaged followers on Twitter, it was a real tribe that didn’t compromise. Check out this interesting comparison of McCain and Obama on social networks – the differences are stark and spell out the failure of the McCain camp and the success of Obama.
It’s also worth remembering that McCain went back to secure backing from hardcore conservative groups and pundits, like Jerry Falwell, who had worked to destroy his character and reputation in the 2000 primary race. These were groups that had spread vile rumors and misinformation about McCain and now they were going to make nice? Making one’s bed with porcupines will not result in a solid partnership, a situationin sharp contrast with the openness of Obama’s movement. One can easily see that Obama helped create a movement, not just a campaign and that led to the success of his campaign. It will be interesting to see if/how Obama maintains the network he established over the past two years, ones he moves into the White House.
Posted: October 21st, 2008 | Author: Thomas Attila Lewis | Filed under: Book Review, Daily Dilly | Tags: Back of the Napkin, Dan Roam, Visual Thinking | No Comments »
Finished reading Dan Roam’s visual thinking tome, “The Back of the Napkin”. I really enjoyed his description of the process by which he came to “discover” visual thinking for himself – that he possessed this ability to communicate with others via simple pictures and graphics.
It was a fun enough read and while I understand why the dimensions of the book are to illustrate a literal “back of the napkin”, the format was incredibly annoying for anyone who uses an LED reading light or if you need to stash it in a way that it doesn’t get damaged. The 1×1 dimensions made it an unwieldy book which was a one of its few drawbacks.
To get the book, click on the cover below to get to Roam’s booksite.
Some quick notes:
Step-by-Step: Very Helpful
Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam
Example case: Not so helpful, felt restricted after a while.
The Visual Thinking Codex chart on page 141 is awesome but doesn’t reproduce well.
The key is in the summary/conclusion, if there’s something to memorize or remember with this book, it’s the following bullet points:
The Visual Thinking Swiss Army Knife:
Our Three Visual Thinking Tools:
- Our Eyes
- Our Mind’s Eye
- Our Hand-Eye Coordination
The Four Steps of Visual Thinking Process:
SQVID – The Five Questions that Open Our Mind’s Eye:
- Simple vs. Elaborate
- Qualitative vs. Quantitative
- Vision vs. Execution
- Individual vs. Comparison
- Change (Delta) vs. Status Quo
The Six Ways We See:
- Who/What
- How Much
- Where
- When
- How
- Why