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Our work in retail has taken us to chain drug, mom-and-pop grocery, super-centers, and grocery channels. We think of these as "traditional" retail settings but the most traditional retail setting is the one that is still the most common around the world: the mom and pop store.
Our work for product manufacturers has taken us to these smaller retail settings quite often. And, anthropololgically speaking, they may hold the most important learning of all, even for big-box retailers.
We use the "itinerary method" to understand what is going on at retail, and we see retail in a holistic way. This means we do
not simply see it as a place where people shop and where transactions happen. We see retail as a workplace, as a place where symbolic meanings are built up, contested, and exchanged during shopping, and a place where very high levels of sociability and interaction are always just below the surface. Sometimes, the sociabilitiy seems to be the major
raison d'être for shopping. After all, anthropologists who study shopping like to remind us that you never shop alone. Whether in Walmart in the Midwest or at a food-stall in Sichuan, shopping is very much about sociability.
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For our team, the key is to be with people before, during, and after shopping. We have explored how people experience retail environments, from big-box retail to Chinese automotive shopping.
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