What We Talk About When We Talk About Shopping†

So, how do you shop? I mean… I mean a lot of things, actually… But the gist is, how do you shop?

Evidently women love to shop. Evidently I am not a woman. Oh wait.

I don’t love to shop. And I am a woman. So let’s just dispel the myth that women love to shop right now.

Now that that’s out of the way… Here’s how I shop in two steps (sort of):

1. I recognize the need for a particular item, be it a specifically specific particular item, or a sort of I-need-this-but-need-to-find-out-what-kinds-of-this-are-available particular item.

2. If my need is for a specifically specific particular item that I can (and am not too lazy to) get locally, I go to the local vendor, locate the item, and buy it.

2a. If my need is for a specifically specific particular item that I can’t (or am too lazy to) get locally, I locate the online retailer that would sell said item, add it to my cart, and buy it.

2b. If my need is for a sort of I-need-this-but-need-to-find-out-what-kinds-of-this-are-available particular item, I search around online until I find what I like (and can afford), and buy it.

I don’t go shopping. I have something in mind, I locate it, I purchase it. I don’t look at other things and browse around. I don’t go to a store just to look around. I never go to a mall unless I need something from the Apple Store or Sephora, and then, only because we don’t have them as free-standing stores in Saint Louis (to my knowledge) or, in the case of the Apple Store, when Mac HQ doesn’t have what I need.

The exceptions to this are: local produce, wine, books and records (to an extent), groceries (to an extent), and vintage/thrift/antiques. I love to browse the farmers’ market. I love to browse liquor stores. I love to browse book and record stores, but often I do just go straight for what I’m looking for. Patrick does the grocery shopping, mostly. And who doesn’t love thrifting/antiquing?

So enough about me. What this is really about is you. Knowing I’m probably not exactly the best barometer for what people talk about when they talk about shopping, I asked Patrick the other day if he thought people shopped online the same way they do in physical stores (I do: go straight to what you want, add to cart, check out). Or do people tend to browse around physical stores, but not online stores? Or vice versa?

So I’m asking: What do you talk about when you talk about shopping? Are you a get in, get what you want, get out kind of person, or a browse around kind of person? Is it different depending on whether you’re in a store, using your mobile device, or sitting at your computer? Do you look at the “other people who bought this item also viewed these items” items? Do you look at “if you like this item you’ll love these items” items? Do you go to an online bookstore and navigate to a genre and start paging through it?

†I bastardized this from Haruki Murakami.* UPDATE: Patrick just told me that Murakami borrowed it from Raymond Carver.* hee. hee.