[ Preface ] [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]  [ Notes ]

3:  It’s a Mall World After All

Never let it be said that I fail to give credit where credit is due (except, admittedly, to those filthy lucre-sucking leeches at Diners, Access, Visa and American Express).  Never let it be said that I am unprepared to pay dutiful homage to the founding fathers of marketing and consumer research (Heil Kotler!).  Never let it be said that I am anything other than a diligent academic of absolute integrity, with a publication record to die for… 

And why? 

’Cos I have a hot-shot lawyer on retainer and if you even try to suggest that I’m not a distinguished rover in the groves of academe - that rumour about me flashing behind the tree of knowledge remains unproven - we’ll take you for everything you have. Every last penny will be en route to my creditors before you have time to say ‘that’ll do nicely’.  We’re not so much talking about your flexible friend as my learned friends, know what I’m sayin’?  And if you continue to give trouble I have some not quite so learned friends, who might be persuaded to pay you a visit.  Comprende?

I’m telling you all this in case you’ve jumped to the mistaken conclusion that, in my flared nostrils, teeth-grinding, hate-shopping haste, I’ve failed fully to acknowledge the extant body of marketing literature on the subject of shopper aversion.  Foam-flecked diatribe is not only unseemly, I hear you say, it is also unnecessary since we already know all there is to know about anti-shopping shoppers. We’ve even got a name for them. 

Yes, I know.  I know all that.  I know we know all there is to know, or at least we think you do.  I’ll deal with those issues in due course.  Why do you keep leaping ahead of me?  This is not a detective story where all is revealed in the final few pages (though, in case you’re wondering, the Kotler did it).  This is not a pseudo-SF book about UFOs or paranormal phenomena, albeit there’s no shortage of Vulcans, androids, cyborgs, mutants, replicants and strange life forms in the marketing academy.  I mean, if modellers aren’t extra-terrestrials, I don’t know who or what is.

No, scented readers, this is a work of scholarship, in case you hadn’t noticed.  It is a fine, upstanding, broad-shouldered, muscle-bound work of marketing research, complete with fab abs, dashing deltoids, trim triceps and pretty cute gluteus maximus, if I say so myself.  Don’t even think of kicking sand in its face…

Since this volume is nothing if not learned, I have no alternative but to run through the existing literature on shopper types.  However, just as I discovered that there are some strange people who actually like shopping -- there’s nowt as queer, don’t you know -- so too countless other researchers have come to pretty much the same conclusions.  In fact, it seems that there are all sorts of different kinds of shopper, almost as many as there are, well, academics trying to eke out another publication.  Exactly the same number, to be precise.  I ask you, friends, is this scary or is this scary? 

What’s worse, since these studies hail from a wide range of national and geographical contexts, my last remaining hope -- namely, that our aforementioned shopaholic sample had something to do with deviant Irish genes -- is irrevocably dashed.  Hence my ‘crazy people, crazy consumers’ hypothesis must be rejected, although experienced marketing scientists such as myself would never dream of using such an emotive word as ‘crazy’ (H0: Irish consumers are not not normal. H1: Irish consumers are not, not not normal.)

No playmates, the real problem with the existing academic literature on shopping orientations is that it is deadly boring.  Not bad, not incompetent, not erroneous - not that I’d be able to tell, mind you - just tedious, dry, banal.  As dull as ditch-water.  Nearly as dull as someone who’d use a dead metaphor like as dull as ditch-water.  Why not as dull as Doncaster?, as dull as Doncaster Rovers?, as dull as Dan Rather?  Who the hell even knows what ditch-water is, these days? Vegans probably drink the stuff, for fuck’s sake. But only the non-carbonated, flavour-free and additives-extracted varieties, naturally.

As you may have gathered by now, I’m not the kinda guy who likes to write boring books, though heaven only knows I’ve tried and maybe I’ll get there one of these days (don’t even think of saying it!).  Furthermore, I’m not an American marketing academic and we all know the biggest bores are not only found in the States but the biggest bore holes of all are deep in the heart of Texas.  However, I realise you folks out there in ivory tower land don’t like too much excitement when reading scholarly works and enjoy the occasional libation of unimaginative, monotonous, platitudinous prose.  Indeed, they say you’re hooked on the ponderous stuff and, inadequate though I am to the task, I’ll try to serve up the tincture of textual tedium you prefer.  I should warn you, nonetheless, that the cocktail of consumer commonplaces coming right up packs a bit of a hidden punch.  It kicks like a, like a, like a, like a… 

Sod it, make up your own simile.  Do I have to do all the work around here?!

Anyway, the notion that there are different types of shopper doubtless goes back to the pre-Pleistocene period, when the proprietor of the Lascaux ‘gallery’, ‘grotto’ ‘cabin’ or possibly ‘nook’ intuited that whereas one cave dweller haggled ceaselessly over the price (‘What, you want three mammoth tusks for that piece of crap? I’ll give you two axe heads - finest flint, guaranteed - and a genuine sabre-tooth.  No, not the whole animal just the tooth.  Do you want the skins of my back, as well?), others complained incessantly about the quality of the merchandise (‘You call that a drawing of a buffalo?  My four summers old daughter could do better.  Who do you think you are, mate, Neanderthal Manet?), and yet others were fixated by after-sales service (“Look, buster, I bought the secret of fire from you and the bloody thing keeps going out.  I stayed home from the ghost dance yesterday, but your repair man failed to show.  Again.”).

However, it is generally accepted that the first academic study of shopper types was conducted in the early 1950s by, wouldn’t you know it, a goddam sociologist called Gregory Stone.¹  Based upon a survey of 124 Chicago department store customers, all of whom were housewives, Stone identified four contrasting kinds of consumer: economic, those motivated by low prices or the prospect of picking up a bargain; personalising, individuals who place great importance on their relationship with store personnel; ethical, people who feel a moral obligation to certain retail establishments, such as small, family-run businesses; and, finally, apathetic, shoppers who have no real interest in, or actively dislike, going shopping and appear to endure rather than enjoy the whole experience.

Quaint though the Stone Age survey now seems in a world where American downtowns have all but disappeared; department stores are the dinosaurs of retailing; homebody housewives are simply unheard of; personalising shoppers are the wimps who fail to complain when they’ve been ripped off; ethical shoppers are those news-stand eccentrics who actually buy the glossy magazines they’ve been reading for the past two hours; economic shoppers are the crazies who count their change from automatic dispensers; and apathetic shoppers are those who just couldn’t care less about those who just couldn’t care less about shopping, his pioneering study started a research tradition that continues to grow and grow and -- yawn -- grow.  Christ, they’ll be writing books about it next.

Another early, albeit somewhat different, investigation was undertaken by Edward Tauber, a marketing researcher who sought an answer to the, if not perennial certainly very interesting question, ‘why do people shop?’.²  Rejecting the reductionist notion, beloved by economists and their utilitarian ilk, that people shop because they need to buy things – I mean, get a grip! – Tauber attempted to tease out the various factors that propel the shopping impulse.

Sadly, he failed to note the elementary fact that people often shop because: (i) they have no other choice as their partner is out of town for a few days and the fridge is empty; (ii) it’s the lesser of two evils since nothing could possibly be worse - not even M & S on an August Bank Holiday - than a visit from the next-door neighbours with their newly-processed holiday snaps; (iii) someone miscalculated the amount of money in a personal account or slush fund and if it’s not blown in the next couple of days it’ll be appropriated by some faceless bureaucrat; and (iv) the fact that children have a disconcerting habit of growing out of things, not least their taste in breakfast cereals, as well as having birthdays, acquiring high-maintenance domestic livestock and believing in Father Christmas.³

Compared to the marketer’s conceptual cul de sac, it has to be said that the sociologist’s line of typological attack has proved much more fruitful.⁴  In the mid-60s, for instance, someone called Philip Kotler -- who he? -- formulated an alternative five-category consumer classification. This comprised Marshallian shoppers, Pavlovian shoppers, Freudian shoppers, Veblenian shoppers and Hobbesian shoppers.⁵  As you might expect, such pretentiously named consumer types never really caught on and the creator of this best-forgotten typology is probably languishing in rightly deserved obscurity at some third rate academic institution.  Veblenian shoppers? I ask you. Freudian shoppers? I mean to say.  Pavlovian shoppers?  Talk sense, Philip.  Clearly this guy Kotler is, or was, a pseudo-intellectual of the most egregious kind.  Worse, his classification was not based upon empirical work. None whatsoever.  You’d never be able to get away with such theoretical nonsense these days, thank goodness.

Despite the grievous set-back that shopper typology studies received from Kotler’s categorical monstrosity, the next couple of decades witnessed a veritable slew of post-Stone papers, each claiming to have discovered a new ‘type’ or sub-type of shopper.  Like Victorian naturalists’ desperate attempts to identify hitherto unknown species of hummingbird or fern, not to mention contemporary star-gazers’ insatiable desire to sift the cosmos for strings of pulsars or agglomerations of uncharted nebulae,⁶ the consumer codifiers of the 70s and 80s managed to find and, most importantly, name all manner of weird and wonderful shopping orientations.  Losers, or what?

Thus we had studies of so-called ‘recreational’ shoppers, ‘impulse’ shoppers, ‘demanding’ shoppers, ‘fastidious’ shoppers, ‘deal-prone’ shoppers, store and brand ‘loyal’ shoppers, ‘convenience’ shoppers, ‘involved’ shoppers, ‘shopping process involved’ shoppers and many more besides.⁷  What’s more, when the shopping lepidopterists ran out of names, or rather resonant names (who today remembers ‘psycho-social’ compared, say, to ‘recreational’ shoppers?), some resorted to that old academic meta-chestnut, studies of studies and the ever-attendant complaint about the lack of definitional consensus on the precise character of ‘convenience’ shoppers, ‘impulse’ shoppers, or whatever.  Others preferred to consort with lifestyle analysis, which was nearly as fashionable as flares in the mid-seventies and, since shopping related questions often formed part of the AIO inventory, this technique gave rise to a particularly rich crop of consumer ‘types’.⁸

Don’t ask.  Please don’t ask.  I beg you.

As I’m sure you appreciate, I have never been one to belabour the point, as it were, so to speak, on the whole, to be sure, if you know what I mean, catch my drift and are still with me.  What’s more, I’m the last person in the world who’d belabour the point about belabouring the point, or even belabour the point about belabouring the point about belabouring the point about shopper typologies.  You must have a fair idea by now of the sorts of things shopping typologists get up to: questionnaire survey of several hundred consumers of various kinds; some kind of factor, cluster or discriminant analysis of the resultant attitudinal data; and the ultimate identification of a number of distinctive shopper groupings, one and only one of which must be completely new and hitherto unnamed.  The remainder invariably map roughly onto existing categories, thereby lending weight to our discipline’s ideology of small steps, new discoveries and the slow but inexorable advance of marketing science.⁹  Yada, yada, yada.

Right then, that’s about it.  I don’t really need to go through any more of the minor-twist studies for you, do I?  You know, just to demonstrate that I’ve actually read them and am capable of compressing their essence into a couple of sentences or, even better, a single word -- ideally the new shopper ‘type’, which serves as a suitably succinct signifier for the research as a whole? 

What, you want some more?  You don’t think I’ve done an adequate summary of the literature in this area?  I’ve left some out?  I’ve been disrespectful about this important stream of marketing scholarship and - gasp - flippant about the findings?  Please forgive me.  How could I have been so remiss?  I’m profoundly sorry and humbly beg your forgiveness. 

Let me get this perfectly clear, you really want to know about Lesser and Hughes’ 1986 survey of 7000 US consumers, which identified eleven shopper types ranging from ‘traditional’ to – wait for it -- ‘dedicated fringe’?¹⁰  You’re asking me for a cogent synopsis of Cullen’s postal poll of 2500, er, ‘principal household shoppers’, which succeeded in tracking down that elusive creature, the shopping ‘snob’?¹¹  Your life will be incomplete, will it, without a detailed account of Kirk-Smith and Mak’s 1992 study of financial services customers, where the ‘pleasurists’ made their ungrammatical appearance?¹² You think I have nothing better to do with my time than paraphrase all manner of undistinguished, all-but identical research exercises, just to save you the trouble of reading them?  Yeah?  Well, I’m not going to do it!  Root them out and read them yourselves, you lazy so and so’s!

Okay, folks, tell you what I’m prepared to do for you.  If you let me outline the major shortcomings of this body of research, as I see them, I’ll give you a quick overview of some of the more recent developments in the area.  We have a deal?

Now, before you get the wrong impression, I must stress that I’m not personally opposed to shopper typology studies, albeit I’ve often been tempted to develop a typology of shopper typologies: crap, utter crap, complete crap and Philip Kotler’s.  In fairness, however, the blind men of consumer research have long been valiantly feeling the by no means amenable elephant of shopper behaviour, and for which they should be heartily congratulated. Only problem is that they keep feeling the same place on the poor pachyderm’s anatomy; not the kind of place, incidentally, one is inclined to mention in polite company.¹³ Doubtless the unfortunate beast feels much better for decades of admittedly inexpert manipulation.  There’s nothing quite like a quick rub down after a hard day’s wallowing in the waterhole.  So I’m reliably informed.  Nevertheless, it seems to me that this body of work is, if not exactly entombed in the you-know-what’s graveyard, certainly within a whisker or two (unwise though it is to combine mice and elephants in the same metaphor).

The shortcomings, as I see them, are fourfold.  First and foremost, many of the shopper typology studies are predicated on female-only samples -- housewife-only samples, as often as not.  This may well have been appropriate in the early days, although I very much doubt if it held good even then.¹⁴  However, it is completely inappropriate in today’s supposedly equal opportunities-oriented society, where women go out to work, household duties are shared, single parent families are far from exceptional and gigantic herds of male shoppers sweep majestically across the grocery store Serengeti, pausing only to forage at the fresh bread and cheese counter en route to the checkout breeding grounds, while the stragglers are mercilessly pursued by the scavengers of cavity wall insulation, the hyenas of AA membership and the vultures of worthy, all-too-worthy causes.

Second, the vast bulk of research in this area is predicated upon the above-mentioned positivistic tradition of large samples, standardised survey instruments, statistical sleight of hand and unembellished reportage.  Far be it for me to suggest that such exercises don’t have their uses.  After all, we have to fill up the pages of our learned journals with something.¹⁵  Nevertheless, it is arguable that the hypothetico-deductive approach fails to capture the essence, the emotions, the euphoria, the ecstasy, the agony of the shopping experience. When we are told, for instance, that 48% of people ‘dislike waiting’ at checkouts, it’s difficult to resist the temptation to throw a street party for the all-conquering heroes of consumer research (except that I hate street parties too).¹⁶

Third, the extant studies, such as they are, almost totally ignore the aversive side of shopping.  Of course, this is not to suggest that they somehow failed to identify the marketplace misanthropes or that mean-spirited shoppers are a figment of certain authors’ febrile imaginations, mentioning no names.¹⁷ Yet, all things considered -- well, some things considered, let’s not get carried away with this rigorous scholarship thing -- it is fair to say that hate-shopping shoppers have been overlooked by the consumer research community hitherto. Much of this reluctance is undoubtedly attributable to the managerial thrust of much marketing research, since it seems self-evident, from a retail management standpoint, that time spent pursuing recalcitrant shoppers is time wasted.  The ‘apathetic’ appellation may also be a contributory factor, as it carries connotations of indifference, lassitude and couldn’t care lessness. Why bother with ‘why bother’ shoppers, after all? (There are probably lots of other contributory factors as well but, to be honest, I couldn’t care less about them and even if I did I’m not sure that I could bring myself to describe them to you.  I’m just apathetic about apathetics, I suppose.)¹⁸

A fourth shortcoming, and the one that I reckon might just sway the sceptical post-structuralists amongst you, is the sheer absurdity of the very idea of a stable shopping ‘self’.  In our postmodern world of multiple selves, fragmented selves, inconsistent selves, polyvocal selves, heteroglossian selves, two’s-company-three’s-a-crowd selves, where all manner of multiphrenic, contradictory and plurivalent personalities, personae or masks are purportedly available to us, the notion of clearly defined and identifiable shopper ‘types’ is rather hard to accept.  Such categories, surely, are much too crude to do justice to a world where ‘wife and mother’ at breakfast becomes ‘professional working woman’, which gives rise to the post work ‘gourmet cook’, weekend ‘naturalist’, holiday ‘culture vulture’ and so on.¹⁹  To suggest that shoppers can be definitively pigeonholed as, say, ‘recreational’, ‘impulsive’ or ‘apathetic’ is an oversimplification at best and arrant nonsense at worst.  Are we always recreational?, in every shop?, on every occasion? Do we act impulsively when buying houses and holidays, as well as sweets and reading material?  Would anyone, other than a complete imbecile, claim to hate all types of shopping?

Fortunately, many of the shortcomings of the shopper typology literature have been tackled in recent years.  Apart from consumer researchers’ growing sensitivity to shoppers of non-female gynaecological stripe and belated appreciation of the multiple shopping selves that characterise the juggling lifestyles of contemporary consumers,²⁰ a significant methodological shift has latterly transpired.  The hitherto dominant positivistic paradigm has been supplanted by a variety of interpretive research procedures.  Generally speaking - not that one should generalise about methods that are opposed to generalisations in general and universals in particular - these are based upon small samples, semi- or un-structured interviewing, qualitative perspectives and an overall desire to gain a deep, idiographic understanding of the subject matter under investigation rather than nomothetically-driven attempt to explain and predict through law-like, er, generalisations.²¹

The problem with methodological shifts, of course, is that they tend to bring researchers out in a terminological rash.  Grandiose, abstruse and arcane words like ‘paradigm’, ‘idiographic’, ‘nomothetically’, ‘grandiose’, ‘abstruse’ and ‘arcane’ are flung around with gay abandon in a suitably scholarly attempt to justify the new approach whilst trashing the perceived opposition.  Needless to say, I’m not the sort of person who’d stoop to ad hominen diatribe against the mainstream marketing community - I prefer to name the slime-buckets - or employ pretentious, pseudo-intellectualised verbiage when other less elevated words, usually with four letters or thereabouts, are readily available.  However, I thought I’d chuck in the previous paragraph just to give you an idea of what you’re missing.  Look, if you don’t stop complaining I’ll have to resort to ‘explanans’, ‘explanandum’, ‘incommensurability’ and others too sesquipedalian to mention, never mind comprehend (nearly as bad as ‘sesquipedalian’, in fact).

Rather than continue to descend into the methodological inferno, it may be more fruitful to note the aversive turn in consumer research.  The negative, essentially dark side of consumer behaviour, or misbehaviour as Holbrook aptly terms it, has come very much to the fore of late.²²  Although many, but by no means all, of these projects are premised on interpretive research methods, their subject matter stands in marked contrast to consumer researchers’ traditional concerns of brand choice and managerial utility.  The aversives range across the entire gamut of I’m-an-affluent-middle-class-academic-but-I-still-have-a-social-conscience type issues - homelessness, prostitution, addictions, AIDS, bulimia, cigarette smoking, violent crime etc (what a relief it must be for these poor unfortunates, now that consumer research is finally on the case). 

More importantly for the purposes of the present essay, however, is that the sharing, caring, touchie-feelie, tree-hugging, sandal-wearing, brown-rice eating, ditchwater-drinking, bleeding-heart, do-gooding, I’ll-become-an-activist-once-I-get-tenure wing of the consumer research community has turned its all-seeing yet sympathetic eye upon the negative side of shopping behaviour. Thus the problem of addictive or compulsive shopping has come under particularly close scrutiny, though this very real and often tragic condition – try not to laugh -- is perhaps better described as having too much of a good thing rather than shopping aversion as such.²⁴ 

Similarly, the stresses and strains of certain shopping occasions, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, weddings and gift giving, have attracted the attention of dark side researchers, as has the internal battle that is invariably fought between the ‘save’ and ‘spend’ sides of our consuming natures.²⁵  Semi-structuralist analysis of the consumer condition - that is, examining behaviour in terms of what it is not, by products not chosen, by lifestyles that are avoided, by browsing rather than buying - is also proving to be a very fertile field of late twentieth century academic toil.²⁶  Nevertheless, studies of hate shopping shoppers remain few and far between.

Despite the interpretive research ‘revolution’, our positivistic brethren have not been idle.  You can say what you like about positivists - knuckle-dragging cretins being my personal favourite - but they can never be described as idle.  As with ant, roach or rodent infestations, not forgetting genito-urinary infections, they are very difficult to get rid of.  Indeed, it could be argued that dark side scholars’ identification of ‘compulsive’ shoppers, ‘addictive’ shoppers, ‘lonely’ shoppers, and what have you is simply a continuation of the typologists’ earlier think-of-a-sexy-name competitions. ‘Sexy shoppers’, now there’s a thought...²⁷ 

Modesty as ever forbids, but I suppose this is the place to come clean and confess that I too have contributed to the shopper typology tradition.  Well, I would’ve done if only I’d got round to publishing the results of the positivistic study that was outed in the previous chapter (as a positivist trapped in a post-positivist body of work, I feel so much better now that I’m no longer living a lie).  Hey, don’t mock, it’s a well-known fact that for every “breakthrough” paper in the journals, ten other academics had exactly the same idea but chose not to put pen to paper. Careerist, you understand. Pushy, don’t you know. Take relationship marketing, for instance.  It was all my idea.  I thought of it first.  The Swedes had nothing to do with it.  I mean, what the hell do they know?  You should see some of the people they invite to talk to them!

Anywise, I appreciate that it’s a bit late in the day to be foisting my findings on you -- if only I’d thought of ‘sexy shopper’ at the time, I could’ve been famous by now – but we did the usual brain-dead, insight-ectomy, number-crunching thing. As one does.  Doesn’t one?  Our regressions were run, factors analysed, dimensions scaled, cons jointed, screes tested, varimaxes rotated, Fs valued and dummies varied until we managed to come up with eight different shopper types (new party game, Statistical Twister!).  However, eight isn’t a very resonant number - not like four, seven, ten or, above all, twelve - and so we went through the whole thing again and again until we could identify twelve contrasting ‘types’ of shopper.  We also gave them sexy names (not ‘sexy’ regrettably) but I’ll deal with those in a wee minute.²⁸

Type One is aggressive, demanding, impatient, impulsive, constantly in a hurry and must get what they want, almost irrespective of price and, most importantly, RIGHT NOW.  Easily recognised by the fact that they’re shouting at the store manager or dashing off a furious letter to the company’s marketing director, this person does not react well to out of stock situations, relocated categories of merchandise or anything that holds them up.  Not the sort of person you want behind you in the checkout line, especially if it’s a hunting/shooting/fishing goods store.  Do they mean me?

Type Two is just the opposite: slow, steady, deliberate, patient, thinks very carefully about the goods or services before acquiring them.  A collector by nature, often with very strong personal attachment to products and possessions, this shopper type is resolute, absolutely unmoving when prices are negotiable and never, but never, runs out of things like milk, coffee and cigarettes or allows themselves to be rushed.  In short, not the sort of person you want ahead of you in the checkout line, except in a hunting/shooting/fishing goods store.

Type Three is capricious, flighty, fashionable, constantly changing, or simply unable to make up, their mind about the choices that confront them, seemingly regardless of product category.  Enjoys shopping and always on the search for something better - the ideal gift, say - but always dissatisfied or disappointed.  This person may appear impulsive yet in fact operates according to a very logical decision process, too logical if anything.  Depressingly pleasant to encounter in the checkout line, since they are very gregarious and probably know most of your extended family.

Type Four, I have to be honest, is not my kind of shopper.  Grumpy, fussy, pernickety, nervous, insecure, timid and, worst of all, careful to the point of stinginess.  This revolting creature keeps a running balance of their checking account, counts the pennies out of their purse one by fucking one and their idea of wild extravagance is to buy an extra rasher of streaky bacon or bag of best before date expired macaroons.  I never encounter this type of person in the checkout line because I have already physically assaulted them at the freezer cabinets and they are being attended to by paramedics.

Type Five is again quite the opposite.  Warm, generous, open, friendly, cheerful, optimistic, confident, sensuous, with an uncanny ability not only to select the very best of the best of what’s on offer, but to actually get what they want.  They know what’s best and, what’s worse, know they know what’s best.  They expect to receive exceptional treatment - being served first at the bar, for example - and come over all pompous-cum-affronted if denied it.  Unpleasant to stand behind at the checkout, but only ’cos you’re jealous of them and want to pinch the prime choices from their basket.

Type Six is a pragmatic, no-nonsense, meticulous shopper.  Writes a shopping list and doesn’t deviate from it.  Knows where the best bargains can be found, reads the small print in contracts, files the guarantees of electrical equipment and is fully au fait with the intricacies of the local chemists’ rota. Going shopping is unimportant to them, certainly nothing to get excited about, merely a job to be done and done efficiently, without fuss, end of story.  Basically the sort of person you want to be replaced by in the checkout line, since he or she is so much better at shopping than the rest of us.

Type Seven is rarely if ever encountered at the checkout line, thank God, because I could not be held responsible for my actions, if they were.  Lazy, indolent, good-for-nothing procrastinators, they don’t even know where the shops are, let alone what a checkout is.  And even if they did, probably couldn’t decide whether to go or not.  Easy prey for fast-talking sales people, hucksters and con-artists of all kinds, these people are the blank generation, the couch potatoes, the moronic inferno of shopping.  If there was such a thing as shopping IQ, this type would be deemed subhuman and safely institutionalised.  Avid viewers of TV shopping channels.

Type Eight is mean, nasty and downright dangerous.  Extremely suspicious by nature, he or she reckons retailers are out to rip them off and is usually right.  Woe betide the shopkeeper who tries it on, however, as this type of person is quick to complain, knows their rights and has no hesitation in bringing the full weight of the law to bear upon the hapless retailer.  Never pays for anything, since they’re usually in dispute with the dealers concerned and the latter usually give up the fight as it’s not worth the trouble.  This is the sort of person you want to have with you in the checkout line, especially if there’s some complaining to be done.  Even better when you’re buying a house, looking for a new car or booking an expensive holiday. But don’t invite them along to that romantic five star restaurant, not if you want to avoid embarrassment over the bill.

Type Nine is a strange shopping beast, an incongruous combination of restlessness and recklessness, devotion and indifference, cheerfulness and cantankerousness.  Will take up a new product, idea, hobby or task with boundless enthusiasm, only to abandon it unfinished, be it a breakfast cereal, course of study or house extension. Their can-do, gung-ho, climb-every-mountain spirit can be very engaging, just don’t expect it to last.  Claims to enjoy shopping, but never seems to do any.  Claims to have lots of friends in the trade and can get a great deal for you, but you’re still waiting three months later.  Claims to be an expert shopper but isn’t very good at it.  This is the sort of person who promises to stand by you in the checkout line, especially when there’s some complaining to be done, but by the time you’ve got to the head of the queue, they’ve mysteriously disappeared.

Type Ten is quite different from type nine, in that if they promise to buy the next round of drinks, you can rest assured they’ll do so (no hiding in the bathrooms for them!).  Only problem is, they spend a long time deciding whether or not to buy a round in the first place.  A very deliberate, careful and totally non-impulsive shopper, this kind of person does not regard going shopping as fun but a deadly serious business, where options have to be weighed, prices compared, goods examined, deals discussed and agreements adhered to.  From a retailer’s perspective, the up-side of this consumer type is that they are extremely store and brand loyal, the down side is that they are very knowledgeable about price points, never buy on a whim and their deliberation can prove irritating to other shoppers.  Probably wouldn’t want to stand behind you in the checkout line, but if they did you can be pretty sure they’ve thought about it and decided you’re worth standing behind.  Bit of a snob, really.

Type Eleven is quite unlike any other shopper you’ll ever meet, except of course for all the other shoppers just like him or her.  Inventive, individual, idiosyncratic, knows what’s best,  has an incredible knack of finding the most unusual, original, bijou items in the most out of the way places, places that no-one else has heard of or patronised - restaurants, gift shops, galleries, jewellers, knick-knack shops etc.  What’s more, they have moved on to still more fashionable establishments before you’ve even got round to visiting the old one.  Endowed with the most bizarre taste in clothes, furnishings, food and so on, they manage to combine the most incongruous elements to astonishing effect.  Never found in the checkout line behind you, because he or she is either shopping elsewhere or has found an alternative way of avoiding the queues.

Type Twelve is perhaps best described as woolly-headed and that’s putting it mildly.  Blessed with grand, romantic, do-gooding visions of utopias, perfect worlds and the like, this is the type of socially-concerned consumer who lionises Body Shop, refused to buy South African wine, is still reluctant to do so, and is a Friend of the Humpback Whale (whether this is reciprocated remains moot).  Recycles paper, plastic and newspapers like they’re going out of fashion, refuses to eat meat or irradiated vegetables, always reads the labels to check for additives, drives a clapped-out Citroen 2CV or Renault Espace, works in one of the ‘caring’ professions, communes with nature at weekends, usually with macrobiotic family in tow, and offers to pay in conch shells or cowrie beads.  Failing that they’ll try barter.  If this person is behind you in the checkout line, you’re in the wrong shop.

So there you have it, the Marie Celeste, the Rockwell incident, the Bermuda Triangle of shopper typologies.  Some interesting denizens of the consumer jungle, I’m sure you’ll agree.  Maybe I should have written it up, after all.  Oh yes, almost forgot, the sexy names of the shopper types.  You remember, I mentioned at the outset that this particular chapter had a twist in its tail?  Well, the shopper types are as follows:  Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces.²⁹

There was no study, folks, I made it all up, threw it together from a couple of astrology books. But, let’s be honest, is the above typology any worse than all the others?  I don’t think so. In many ways it’s better, truer to life.  They were recognisable types, after all, weren’t they? 

You know, if I were the entrepreneurial type, or had a Virgo as an agent, I could make a fortune out of this.  Shopping horoscopes.  Could be very big.  I mean to say, we have horoscopes for romance, money, heath and beauty, careers, families and household pets, for Christ’s sake.  Why not shopping in the stars?  Best-sellerdom beckons, I reckon, the syndication possibilities are endless, personal consultations and hot-lines but a phone call away.  Consuming Astrology, that’s what I’ll call it.  I could be the Linda Goodman, the Patrick Walker, the Mystic Meg of Marketing.  Open a new file….

Oh yes, I see it now, everything’s becoming clear, I can predict the future of this volume.  The very next chapter will be methodological in focus, followed by empirical material, followed by more empirical material, followed by yet more empirical material, followed by for-God’s-sake-give-the-empirical-material-a-rest-Stephen.  I see tedium ahead.  I see a story about Utah.  I see managerial implications. Stranger things have happened, my friend.  Cross my palm with silver and all will be revealed.  Okay, cheapskate, turn over the page instead.  If you insist.

[ Preface ] [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]  [ Notes ]