The Call of the Mall: How We Shop

by PacoUnderhill (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $5.09

  Like Underhill's bestseller, Why We Buy, this is a pleasurable and informative book on how we shop that surprises and tickles. Like Bill Bryson's Walk in the Woods, which took readers up the Appalachian Trail, this book takes readers to a place they know much better: the shopping centre, the place where people meet. Nothing exemplifies shopping more than the mall or shopping centre. It is the US's gift to personal consumption and the crossroad where consumer marketing, media and street culture meet. It is where the developed world (and increasingly everyone else too) goes to acquire, eat and hang out. It is where fashion trends are made dreams are constructed, and many people find their first jobs. The Call of the Mall is about sex and buying lingerie, about why the same camel coat costs exactly twice as much in the women's department to the men's, about why all mall food is so dreadful when the commodities in the shops are so good. Why location matters so much - but more for perfumes than DIY and why malls are invariably such bad architecture. Underhill's views on the mall are sophisticated, funny, serious, and surprising.