10 design tricks to turn us all into shopping zombies

This morning, after apparently being quoted in the Daily Mail talking about women's love of shopping, I popped out to the local shop where I'm staying in Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye.
It looks like this (below).

Skye's answer to Westfield? Not a digital waterfall in sight.

I know, they couldn't make it less appealing if they tried.  But there's a certain authenticity to this type of shop;  a corrugated-tin reminder that shopping is just about getting the stuff we need, not a leisure activity.

 Shopping is just something we do in order to live better lives, it shouldn't be the way we live our life.

I wasn’t the first to compare shoppers to zombies (see earlier post and a dazzling analysis by Mimi Spencer in Saturday’s Times) and I’m sure I won’t be the last, but recent news about a million shoppers invading Westfield in its first week of opening got me thinking again about the draw of the mall. And all the psychological tricks that are pulled to make sure the mindless keep searching those seven miles of shop fronts, perhaps in the vain hope they’ll find their lost soul.

Are you being served? Or manipulated?

Westfield’s marketing team are on a mission to make sure the shopper stays for at least two hours. Because the average person won't be able to go for more than two hours without parting with a hefty proportion of their paypacket, and feeling the need to top it off with a cappuchino and a visit to one of its 50 cafes.

Here's how the designers-cum-brainwashers plan the mall to persuade you to suspend your critical faculties and surrender to the goddess of eternal consumption:

·     No clocks for fear you might notice the time (and your life) slipping away and feel compelled to rush empty-handed towards the exit.

·       The soul-less exterior of the mall, anonymous and blank enhances the contrast effect as you enter the sparkling glassy jingly interior.

·       Deliberately disorientating layouts so you get lost and retrace your steps or go off on an aimless purse-splurge.

·       Reflective echoing floors that make the carpeted interior of the shops more alluring.

·       Ditto the harsh lighting in the malls contrasting with the seductive and glitzy lighting of the shops’ interiors.

·       Mirrors on the walls between shops. People slow down when they pass mirrors (vanity) and how can they sell to you if youre rushing around?

·       Slowing your pace down slows your heart rate and even your blink rate, rendering you more mesmerised and gullible. Piped birdsong and a digital waterfall help the coma-induction process.

·       Shopping stretches of a maximum length of 300 metres, about the distance for which buying interest can be held at a peak before waning.

·       Expanses of stores above and around that are visible through glass balustrades and open plan escalators, giving uninterrupted views of tempting targets,

·       Scrupulously clean floors so your attention is exclusively fixed on shop fronts and not distracted by having to step over or around street detritus.

So next time you realise you spent more time in the shopping centre than you'd intended and more cash than you could afford, you'll know how it happened.

10 reasons why men need Sheconomics

Don't let our pinkness put you off - we have lots of bloke-friendly stuff going on. Here's why we think men need Sheconomics too:

·      1. Because research shows your investments would surge if you used your feminine side a tad more. No need to greet your latest dividend with a tearful acceptance speech, it's just about not being over-cocky, a risk-taker or one of the boys. More diverse portfolios, caution and not over-reacting to a volatile market explain why female investors outperform men consistently.

·     2  Because you could learn how to dress for success. Drop that favourite well-worn brown suit off at Oxfam and let someone with a tape measure get intimate with your inside leg. Seriously, people do judge you by what you wear. A lot. Men in bespoke suits are judged to be more successful, confident, trustworthy, flexible and higher earners than their off-the-peg counterparts.

·     3. Because you could suss out how to have cool, non-confrontational conversations about money. And you could have a better, happier home-life if you did so. There are tricks and strategies we can all learn that will make money-chat nicer. No issues. No arguments. Hugs optional.

·    4.  Because you could be a better Dad.  Without realising it parents play more roughly with boy babies than with girls. They let boys explore more than girls and use more emotion words with their daughters than with their sons. Swat up on the significant but subtle ways you can give your daughter the kind of start in life you are unconsciously giving your son. Get wind of some good Sheconomics strategies for raising kids.

·      5. Because you’ll do the right thing by her in the event of the unmentionable happening.

     When multi-million selling author Stieg Larsson died suddenly at 50 his estranged family, and not his life-long partner Eva, inherited his fortune. Eva's even having to fight a legal battle to stay in their apartment. No-one wants to think about death but not thinking of those you'll leave behind is dumb.

  

·     6. Because you overwork your logical left brain and neglect the poor old right. Ever thought about which side of your brain is managing your money? Intuition can be a useful tool, but seems to be the reverse of logic. The field of behavioural economics is obsessed by these concepts because humans are rarely rational decision-making machines. They fall victim to flawed logic, emotional reactions and cognitive biases.

·      7. Because you could realise some of the hidden forces behind financial success, and why it helps to be tall, left-handed and tidy. 

      Yes, we said tidy. No, we’re not nagging. It's just that taller people earn more than shorter people and left-handed people earn more than right-handed people. Things that are hard to change. But people with tidier homes do earn more than people with messy homes. Reason to not drop those socks on the floor?

·      8. Because if you’ve ever suffered death-by-dinner-party you’ll see how company boards make the same mistakes as very dull hosts. Mixing up the guests brings livelier conversations and new perspectives. About 10 years ago Norwegian boards were mostly made up of men with very similar views and backgrounds who went hunting and fishing together. This meant there was a huge risk of group-think in the boards’ decision-making processes, and a real lack of diverse perspectives.

     Adding just 3 women to boards has been shown to increase the company's bottom line by 40% and boost the country's economy.

·      9 . Because emotional intelligence is just as important as IQ. You’ve always known that IQ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be - there are better ways of selecting the right bunch of people to work with.

     Studies show the most effective groups listen to each other, share constructive criticism, have open minds, are not autocratic and use conversational turn-taking to good effect.

·      10. Because we can all learn something from the bagel man. You can tell how much people like their bosses and their work from how much dosh they drop in the honesty box. It could be a good metric for getting to know the health of your company and the happiness of your employees. Honest. 

 Final word from a lovely friend of Sheconomics, Alan Newman of the Finance IT Network:

• "There's probably some merit to the accusation that the financial services sector is 'male, pale and stale'. The insights from this book - co-authored by a Professor of Psychology and a Financial Coach (who left IFA boredom behind her) - should be compulsory reading for us blokes."                        

Photocopied picture of eyes makes people more honest

 

Have you heard about the bagel man?

Every morning, Paul F delivered some bagels and a cash box to a company's staff room. 

Then he went back later to pick up the money and the leftovers. 

It was an honour-system, people took a bagel and left a dollar, and it worked. Within a few years, he was delivering 700 dozen bagels a week to 140 companies and earning as much as he had ever made as a research analyst. He had left  corporate life behind. And he was happy.

As well as coming up with a great business model Paul F had also - inadvertently – created an elegant economic experiment. 

Comparing the takings with the number of bagels taken told him, down to the penny, just how honest people had been. And he noted that the most honest offices were those where people liked their boss and their work! He also got a higher payment rate (over 90%) from smaller offices than larger ones.

Now recent research tells us if he'd stuck a photocopied picture of a pair of eyes onto his cash box, people would have coughed up more.

Psychologists at the Univerity of Newcastle noticed that donations into an honesty box for coffee always fell short of the amount of coffee consumed. So one week they stuck a picture of a pair of eyes on the box. The following week they changed the image to pictures of flowers, then eyes and so on. 

People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a flower picture. The figure below shows how the donations fluctuated according to the image displayed. Read their paper here.

 People weren’t actually being watched, of course, but even a pair of photo-copied eyes was enough to prick their conscience. You might like to  see if this works with your children by sticking a pair of eyes onto their money boxes, if they're tempted to raid them a bit too often. Or, if you have a chocolate hob-nob habit, test it on yourself with a pair on the biscuit tin!