January 29, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:The Call of the Mall
So the other day I was walking through Target with a gentleman friend, who is also shopping for his new apartment. We had been shopping for several hours, and all I needed to complete my list was a shower curtain. On the way to the shower curtain area, I stopped to look at just a few more things . . .
"Jane," said he, "can we get the shower curtain and go, please?"
Insensitive to the urgency in his voice, I replied "I just want to look in a few more places."
"Jane," he said, in a level, even tone which was a credit to his sex, "I will look for shower curtains for you. But for the health of our relationship, I have to tell you that I am not doing this every time we go into a store. I just can't do it. I will kill myself."
I tried to explain my emotional inability to leave any aisle unlooked at, without success. We got the shower curtain and left, with my promise to find a woman to do this the next time I feel the need to spend three hours at Target.
I am recalling this to you because I have just read an excellent blog post on malls by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, which reads, in part:
1. At last count there were 1,175 large regional enclosed malls in the United States. Such malls account for about 14 percent of all U.S. retailing, or about $308 billion in sales.2. The average mall customer spends 22 seconds looking at a mall map, and often leaves the map baffled.
3. The spaces near mall entrances typically yield lower rents and lower valued items. The shopper, upon entering the mall, is still disoriented and is not yet ready to buy something. That is why hair cutteries are so commonly found near mall entrances.
4. Men are more interested in people watching at malls, whereas women are more interested in shopping. Men also like the non-retail parts of malls, such as food courts, which do not require them to price shop or try on anything.
I suspect, although I have absolutely no evidence, that this is based in evolutionary biology: that men shop as hunters, and women as gatherers. Any of my readers have any theories they want to suggest? Posted by Jane Galt at January 29, 2004 1:15 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links
Then the woman runs out to buy it while chewing the insides of her cheeks to a bloody pulp instead of pointing out - again- that the last time they were in a store as a couple, she said, we really need to look and see if they have a....
Boy, is that ever dysfunctional. I hope you're not describing a relationship you're actually in.
I hate mall shopping, because I hate seeing things I want and can't afford. If I'm going to pay off student loans instead of buying $100 sweaters, I'm not going to go salivate over the $100 sweaters. So my husband buys most of my clothes, and does a fine job of it. He does have kind of a hunter mentality about it, though. If I want a suit, he decides who might have the right suit at the right price and he stops by on his lunch hour. In and out. If they have it he brings it home for a thumbs up or down. If they don't he tries again the next day. It's like having a wardrobe specialist. Everyone should be so lucky.
Dear Jane,
Just thoguht you might like to know that the mall facts you site above don't actually come from Tyler Cowen, but rather from Paco Underhill the author of the book Call of the Mall just published by Simon & Schuster. The mall fact s were pulled directly from his book and you can find many more gems like that in the book as well as an active discussion on the shopping behavior of men and women in malls. For further insights into your shopping patterns you might be interested to read his first book entitled Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping.
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