Window shopping

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Window shopping, sometimes called browsing, refers to an activity in which a consumer browses through or examines a store's merchandise as a form of leisure or external search behaviour without a current intent to buy. Depending on the individual, window shopping can be used as a pastime or to obtain information about a product's development, brand differences, or sale prices.

Traditionally, window shopping involves visiting a brick-and-mortar store to examine a product but is also done online in recent times due to the availability of the internet and e-commerce. A person who enjoys window shopping is known as a window shopper.

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  People gazing at the merchandise displayed in a store window
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  A woman window shopping

History

The idea of ambling through shops and not necessarily making a purchase is a modern activity that first gained popularity in 1800s. The widespread availability of the plate glass in the late 18th century caused shop owners to build windows that spanned the full lengths of their shops for the display of their merchandise in order to draw in customers. The first display windows in shops were first installed in London, where levels of consumption were rapidly growing. One of the first to experiment with this new retailing method was Francis Place at his tailoring establishment in Charing Cross.

By the 1900s the popularity of window display had grown higher and the window display continued exert an enormous attraction not only on those that wanted to make purchases but also on passers-by that appreciated beauty. In order to achieve the right aesthetics, store owners and managers would hire decorators or window dressers to attractively arrange merchandise in the shop windows; indeed, the professional window display design soon became an object used to lure shoppers into the stores.

As a form of leisure

"Most men mistakenly assume that you look into show windows to find something to buy. Women know better. They enjoy window-shopping for its own sake. Store windows, when you look into them with pleasure-seeking eyes, are strange places full of mental adventure. They contain first clues to dozens of treasure hunts which if you follow them, lead to as many different varieties of treasure." - MW Marston, The Rotarian, September 1938

Window shopping was synonymous with being in the city and moreover offered women a legitimate reason to be able to move around in public without a chaperone. At the time (late 1800s), it was a minor scandal to move around in public without a male chaperone because not everyone was happy about the intrusion of women into urban life. Many looked down on females who walked the streets alone and even newspaper columnists condemned their shopping habits as “salacious acts of public consumerism.” However, the rise of window displays soon gave women a foothold in the modern city, and for many, a new pastime. Soon, housewives started roaming the city under the pretence of shopping. “Shopping” in this context did not always involve an actual purchase, it was more about the pleasures of perusing, taking in the sights, the displays, and the people.

Prior to the introduction of glass plates for shops and the evolution of window shopping, people could not just enter shops without the intention to make a purchase; even less so to walk around just for fun or to pass time. Most of the stores before and during the World War II were usually small with not enough space for people to just go and linger about. The early department stores pioneered the transformation of traditional customers into modern consumers and of "just merchandise" into spectacular "commodity signs" or "symbolic goods". Thus they laid the cornerstones of a culture we still inhabit. Peoples' patronage of stores transformed from just walking in, buying and leaving to "shopping", especially for females. Shopping no longer consisted of haggling with the seller but of the ability to dream with one's eyes open, to gaze at commodities and enjoy their sensory spectacle.

With the development of large out of town malls, especially after the Second World War and, more recently, sales outlets in central high streets, shopping places are becoming hybrid spaces mixing goods and leisure in varied proportions. Traditional small forms of stores and retail distributors have been replaced with large malls and shopping centres which now characterize contemporary western retail. In these modern times, though malls and shopping centres have fixed prices, one can enter and leave as they want without purchasing any item. It has become a place of socialization or leisure for most people, especially women. Indeed, the pleasures, meanings and competences which consumers put to work in shopping centres and department stores are far broader than their ability to bargain on price and purchase objects: in these spaces people do not just buy things, they keep up with the world of things, spending time with friends in a polished environment filled with both fantasy and information. In fact, around a third of those who enter a shopping centre leave without having bought anything. In practice, thus, window shopping is an assorted activity, done differently according to the shopper’s social identity.

Online window shopping

There are some types of consumers who spend a lot of time in online marketplaces but never purchase anything or even have the intention to buy and since there are no “transportation costs” required on visiting an online store site, it is much easier than visiting a brick-and-mortar store. This cluster of online consumers are called “e-window shoppers”, as they are predominantly driven by stimulation and are only motivated to surf the internet by visiting interesting shopping websites. These e-shoppers appear as curious shoppers that are only interested in seeing what is out there rather than trying to negotiate to obtain the lowest possible price. These online window shoppers use news and pictures of products to seek hedonic experience as well as keep themselves up to date with the industry status and new trends.

Popular culture

Music

• "Window Shopper", a single by rapper 50 Cent.
• "Window Shopping", a song written by Marcel Joseph and popularized by country singer Hank Williams, who released the song in July 1952 on MGM Records.
• "Nan, you’re a Window Shopper", a parody of 50 Cent’s Window Shopper by Lily Allen.

Film

• Breakfast at Tiffany's, a 1961 American Romantic comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and written by George Axelrod, featured Audrey Hepburn window shopping at Tiffany & Co. in the first scene.

Books

• Fashion Window Shopping, a book by David Choi.
• Window Shopping, a book by Anne Friedberg.
• Window-shopping through the iron curtain, a book by David Hlynsky.

See also

• Window dresser
• Display window
• Online shopping
• Visual merchandising
• E-commerce
• Showrooming
• Christmas window
• Department store
• Discovery shopping
• Retail