New York Times Best-Selling Books
Essential Reading for Understanding Consumer Behavior
Paco's books are translated into 25+ languages and used in MBA programs, design schools, and retailing training programs worldwide. From the seminal Why We Buy to the latest insights in How We Eat, explore the complete collection of works that define modern retail psychology.
Latest Release • Winter 2022
How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink
Our food—from where it's grown to how we eat it—is undergoing a radical transformation. In How We Eat, Underhill takes a hopeful and characteristically witty approach to how we can change the ways we consume, revealing the future of food in surprising anecdotes.
Key Insights
- How cities are becoming countries with the rise of farmers markets and rooftop farms
- How supermarkets are discovering their parking lots are valuable real estate for growing food
- How marijuana farmers' innovations are transforming food production
- How food intersects with every major battle we face today—political, environmental, economic, and racial
Selected by The Next Big Idea Club as one of their Winter 2022 nominees for “most exciting, must-read nonfiction titles of the season.”
Complete Book Collection
Four decades of insights into consumer behavior and retail psychology
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
Updated and Revised Edition
The classic bestseller that started it all. Completely revised for the digital age, including new chapters on global markets, online retail, and cutting-edge innovations in shopping behavior.
- 27 Languages
- 28 Editions
- Global Bestseller
What Women Want
The Science of Female Shopping
As women become wealthier, more powerful, and more independent, discover how their choices and preferences are changing the retail environment in surprising ways.
- Women's evolution from homemakers to homeowners
- The rise of the home gym and home office
- Hotel industry redesign for female business travelers
- Why some malls succeed while others fail
Call of the Mall
The Geography of Shopping
An entertaining and insightful look at America’s love/hate relationship with the mall, exploring how this institution became the centerpiece of our commercial and civic lives.
- The mall as America's new town square
- What works and what doesn't in mall design
- International mall culture comparisons
- The future of shopping centers
Critical Acclaim & Reader Reviews
What industry leaders and readers are saying about Paco's work
“Why We Buy and Call of the Mall are classics of modern retail ethnography.”
Fast Company
“[Underhill] has the social scientist’s uncanny ability to describe what is right under our noses with a lucidity that makes the mundane buying, selling, chowing down, hangout out positively riveting. The picture he leaves us with is surprisingly provocative…. [An] entertaining, unconventional survey.”
Boston Globe
“Underhill is a knowledgeable observer … offers first-rate insights with equal measures of humor and rage.”
The Wall Street Journal
Industry Leader Testimonials
The Dalai Lama said, ‘Shopping is the museum of the twentieth century.’ Paco Underhill explains why. Brilliantly.
Thanks, Mr. Underhill for explaining in clear and witty prose why my shopping habits are not all that crazy. Now, please tell my wife!
Call of the Mall explains why we shop ’til we drop-all in one spot!
How We Eat Professional Reviews
…The fun anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book are particularly enjoyable as they bring you into his story. Most enjoyable, though, are the consumer and shopping insights Paco shares from his decades of experience watching customers shop. This is really about how we shop and consume food, in all its ways, how this is changing and what’s on the horizon. How We Eat” takes you from the parking lot of your local grocery store, inside in all its drabness and consistency to a future vision about sensorial and visual experiences to city farms. Paco shares insights and his love for food, how it brings us together and the remarkable changes and innovations through conversations and personal stories. I definitely recommend it.
“How We Eat is a fascinating journey down the rabbit hole of consumerism and how evolving cultural and societal shifts have had a myriad of impacts on our relationship with food and the business of selling it. Seen through Underhill’s unique lens of personal experiences and professional expertise as one of the world’s foremost shopping anthropologists, How We Eat raises questions—from the mundane to the profound, with equally important implications—that will make you rethink not just how we eat and shop, but how we interact, live and coexist.”
How We Eat is not a technical book about food. It is a masterful adventure through the coffee shop, around the grocery store, and across the road to the farmer’s market. Paco’s power of observation comes to life through humorous and engaging stories that open your eyes to the world of food retailing and all the things we take for granted in what and how we eat. On par with Kitchen Confidential, How We Eat lays open the underbelly of what goes in our bellies! A must read for anyone curious about the food we eat and why we buy what we buy. Destined to be another classic alongside Why We Buy.
Book Feature
Paco Underhill: How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink - Strand Bookstore
A virtual event with environmental psychologist Paco Underhill, discussing his new book, How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink.