Walking down the aisle: how shopping tests your relationship Long lineups, big prices -- it's hell out here. No wonder retailers are trying to help couples cope

"The fact that shopping can make or break a relationship — and that a relationship can make or break shopping expeditions — is one that retailers are paying attention to.

Glasgow's Braehead Mall recently offered women a "shopping boyfriend," a guy who "takes a girl around, helps her pick her outfits, stands outside the change rooms — does all the things men don't like about shopping," in the words of organizer Pauline Shaw.

Several dozen women checked their regular boyfriends into a "recharge zone," complete with video games, music and lad magazines, to take advantage of "the novelty that someone actually enjoyed shopping with them."


"Where couples have the most conflict is where they traditionally make the decisions together: shopping for the home.The way men and women shop together is changing drastically, according to Paco Underhill, the author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (Simon & Schuster). "With almost three-quarters of North American women working, the role of the traditional family budget manager doesn't exist any more," he says from the headquarters of his New York-based consulting company, Envirosell.
At the same time, men's relationships with shopping have also changed. "For many younger men, the mall was the first place they became themselves," he says. "It was where they bought things out of their own pocket, were able to touch and see things that interested them in a more intimate way than they did before."
In the "gender-bender" world that is evolving, Underhill says, retailers need to rethink the needs of shoppers. "Part of what we're looking at is, are there shopping aids which are perceived as either less 'female' or more 'unisex' or more 'masculine'? Can we get beyond the Little Red Riding Hood basket you find at Shopper's Drug Mart?" He says many men seem to prefer pulling grocery carts rather than pushing them, pram-style, and he envisions a shopping cart with the "practicality and style of a Corvette."

—Jessica Johnson, "Walking down the aisle: how shopping tests your relationship," The Globe and Mail, April 12, 2003 Page L1