Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Hey, you Harvard women!
If, like women everywhere, you feel the need to take off a few of those unsightly pounds you've put on (you know, since you adapted to that sedentary faculty life and your youth started dropping behind you) then maybe you should start shopping like men.
...While we're standing in front of the store's interior, staring at miles of candy, chips, and chocolate, Sasson [Lisa, assistant clinical professor, public health, New York University] makes an announcement: "Wherever there's temptation, like here, we're going to shop like a man."Do they teach it at Harvard Business School?
Turns out, there's a big gender gap in shopping styles. Men do surgical-strike shopping. They know what they want, and they go get it.
Women browse, pause, read, and choose. There are times when each strategy is more useful -- and yields healthier results. For example, if you're in relatively healthy territory, such as the store's periphery, it makes sense to browse and select with care.
But when you're in the kind of danger zone we're in now, browsing yields to temptation.
(By the way, Kelley [Kevin, partner, Shook Kelley, national marketing consultants] studied the difference by taping real shoppers, and stores all over the country use this research.)
Sasson demonstrates how to man-shop the snacks.OK, Harvard ladies, here are the links to send the hate mail to self-hating Lisa and that publisher purveyor of sexist stereotypes Prevention.
They're prime temptation territory -- almost 60 percent are bought on impulse -- so we enter the aisle with a macho purpose, bypassing chips and stopping at the unshelled nuts.
"Nuts are a healthful snack..." [Prevention]
As to Kevin, you might be able to jump him right there at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he teaches professional development. Wear a dark color though, if you haven't gotten rid of those pounds yet -- as a design guy he's sensitive about the unsightly, you understand...
