Text Box: Modern Shopping Malls and Consumer Value An Excerpt from MYCBBook              In mankind’s history of thousands of years, only a hundred or so years ago, if someone said “I am going shopping,” it would have meant only one thing: that person was going to the market to buy something. (By some accounts, John Wanamaker’s Philadelphia store, opened in 1877, is considered to be the origin of the modern day department store.) In some countries, this has been the case as recently as 20 or so years ago. But in a substantial part of the world and for a majority of consumers today, this phrase has now come to mean a multi-faceted event. Spending money and buying is a part of it, sometimes, not always. But the event full-blooms as a diversion: it is to meet friends, to hang out with them; to do some people watching. It is also to discover new objects of desire—dresses, stilettos, colognes, books, music CDs, gadgets, body-pampering potions, and more. It serves us well, in general, just to soak up the atmosphere, listen to the sounds, and take in the aromas of the surrounding spaces we call malls. For the moment, though, let’s focus only on the act of buying. ….. [Material omitted]             As a consumer, you cannot go on buying thousands of products day in day out, and not be self-aware of these processes—the processes we describe in this chapter. And as marketers, you will not be able to tap into consumer strivings for their buying goals unless you understand what would constitute for consumers an efficient and effective shopping task. That is why you should make the models and process-descriptions presented in this chapter part of your marketing plan.             Now to the other-than-buying part of shopping. For a modern day consumer, it would be difficult to imagine what life would be without this full-bloom form of shopping. Ostensibly, the raison d'ętre of department stores, and now malls, is to enable one-stop shopping; in practice, however, their real worth springs from their ability to serve a larger societal purpose: because of their large physical space and anonymity infeasible in the mom-and-pop stores, they serve as “public spaces”—for people to meet, chat, mingle, watch, walk, sit, hangout, and yes, not infrequently, buy something.             Now there is no turning back. These days and going forward, consumers would do much of their nonessential buying only in these “fantasy marketspaces.” And marketers—retail stores—had better offer them. For two gains: successfully sell their wares; and serve a larger societal purpose at the same time, namely, make available enjoyable public spaces. Shopping—in its full–bloom version, is modern day hedonism for many consumers, and a store a social venue. Designing stores as social and hedonism venues is indeed a lofty marketing endeavor.   Source: MyCbBook (www.mycbbook.com), p. 389.                                              Authored by: Ban Mittal (see more, and also)