So-called retail anthropology now regularly maps the most arcane patterns of consumer behavior: which aisle number in a store seems the most alluring; what kind of overhead lighting and piped-in music is conducive to purchasing; what gimmicks lure shoppers into the most lucrative parts of the store, a fabled area known to marketers as Zone 4. Before long, the ways of the American shopper will be as codified and demystified as those of a Yanomami tribesman.

Soon, however, it dawned on Paco [Underhill] that Whyte's ideas could be taken a step further — that the same techniques he used to establish why a plaza worked or didn't work could also be used to determine why a store worked or didn't work. Thus was born the field of retail anthropology.