If you take for granted that selling products, or at least choice among products, has little to do with conscious thought, you then turn to the things that do matter: mostly what the store etc. look like, though smell and sound can also matter. This is Lee’s specialty, and she mixes some research with rules of thumb to explain her philosophy of store design. She’s big on accent color as the most important—she says that green only accounts for 5% of Starbucks’ color scheme (taking into account the rest of the store, the full awnings, etc.) while the rest is more neutral dark brown and warm ivory. I also learned the disgusting neologism “kidults” to describe a particular category of consumers; yellow appeals to them. Coffee tastes stronger from a dark brown can than from a yellow one, though.

Lee also spends a lot of time talking about lighting: the right warmth of lighting, from the right distance, can make products inviting (and the wrong can make them look terrible and unflattering). But, Lee says, part of this is cultural, and South Koreans prefer brighter lights than Europeans and Americans. Backlighting, she thinks, doesn’t work in most commercial spaces; it “creates an air of mystery and authority by highlighting the edges of a subject, which is why it is often used in religious settings.”

Of particular interest to me, vision interacts with other senses: “shelving dark-colored products on top can create the illusion that they might topple over,” making some shoppers anxious. Other uses of color and heaviness include the use of black or other dark colors to package small, expensive products so they seem heftier. One company reportedly saved a lot of money in heating costs by painting blue cafeteria walls orange, making the place feel so warm that people routinely complained even when the temperature was lowered from 24 degrees C to 20.

Overall, people looking for new ideas for store design—and some no-nos—could probably nab useful tidbits from the book.