• USA Today, Monday, December 28, 2009 10:42 AM

There's further good news for retailers and e-tailers alike in Lee Eisenberg's new book, Shoptimism (Free Press, $26). In fact, the former editor-in-chief of Esquire and past evp at Lands' End, posits, "our economy, our culture, and our social order are built around the Buy. For better and worse, America is, on balance, what it buys."

Americans have four good reasons for buying products (that don't put them into debt), Eisenberg writes and Kerry Hannon reports: Products make them happy (e.g., ticket to a play or a trip to Paris); they transform them (e.g., a new hairdo); self-extension (e.g., Nike Air Max sneakers), and "everlastingness" (e.g., goods that in time will become an heirloom).

Eisenberg writes that brands connect us to others, express our values and keep their promises -- "or else." By becoming a cookie-cutter chain, for example, he feels that Starbucks lost its soul. Its high prices led to people calling it "Fourbucks" and, in essence, it became "un-cool."

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