A Place Of Your Own
Reading chapter 36 of The Malling of America, of William Kowinski, I see a man who does not like how America is progressing in time. He believes that we are heading towards a time when everyone will be preprogrammed to be hard-core consumers and the world is going to be dominated by money. In chapter 36 of his book, he explicitly blames the mall as being the cause and proponent of this change. I agree with Mr. Kowinski’s ideas of the changing world, but I do not agree that the shopping malls are to blame for the changes. The malls purpose is to produce a profit for the investors. If shopping centers were not profitable then it would not be there. Unlike Kowinski’s views of the mall, I see a place where people, especially young adults, congregate in a safe environment.
The mall offers working opportunity to young adults. Opportunities where someone with no experience and qualifications can work. I believe it can be quite hard for a young adult to obtain a job where there are many responsibilities and the requirements are experience and knowledge. I disagree with Kowinski’s that the benefits of a job in the mall are overrated. With a job at the mall, young adults learn to set goals. Even thought these goals might be little goals, but the little goals also have many lessons that shape members of our society. Kowinski writes about a young girl who works at an establishment in the food court of some mall. Kowinski underestimates the influence of the perfect curl on top of the ice-cream cones. The girl learns to take pride in what she does. Not the pride in a perfect curl but pride in the fact that she has accomplished a goal that has thought here perfection, alertness. And some of these lessons might help her in the future. The mall also provides job for young adults who need the paycheck for living and/or education.
A study by the International Council of Shopping Centers found that there are many teenagers in shopping malls and the mall is a place where teenagers like to go. The International Council encouraged the teenage presence because ‘the vast majority support the same set of values as does shopping center management.
Now, a normal sized town contains fast-food joints, supermarkets, malls, and superstores, but a small town lacks that appeal. The small-town could be the most beautiful landscape known to man, but lack the necessary luxuries in life that a typical American would benefit from. Carr and Kefalas make this statement that emphasizes the town’s lack of appeal, “Indeed the most conspicuous aspects of the towns landscape may be the very things that are missing; malls, subdivisions, traffic and young people” (26). The authors clearly state that they realize that towns, such as the Heartland, are hurting because of the towns’ lack of modernization. For all intents and purposes, the town’s lack of being visually pleasing is driving away probable citizens, not only the native youth, and possible future employee’s away from a possible internship with the town. The citizens with a practice or business hurt from the towns inability to grow up and change along with the rest of the world, yet the town doesn’t realize what bringing in other businesses could potentially do for their small town. Creating more businesses such as malls, superstores and supermarkets would not only drive business up the roof, but it’ll also bring in revenue and draw the
In the essay, “Working at McDonald’s,” Amitai Etzioni shares his strong belief that working, especially at McDonald’s type restaurants, is bad for teenagers. I would agree that working is not a good thing for teenagers under some circumstances but at other times it is good. First, jobs affect school involvement and attendance in bad ways. Second, jobs often provide “on the job experience,” but much of the time the experience taught is useless. Third, fast food jobs may provide a disadvantaged status. Fast food jobs can also provide an advantaged status. Finally, workers can learn to manage their money by making mistakes with money before they get into the Real World.
This past month I made my last visit to the popular teenage/college student retail store Abercrombie and Fitch. Finishing up some back to school shopping, I was on a quest for jeans, and I knew the place to get them. My last two favorite pairs were from Abercrombie and Fitch, and I was planning on buying the same kind once again. Happy and relieved that I would not spend the afternoon ransacking the mall for one pair of jeans, I entered the store to the pulsating beat of techno dance music. In front of me was the teenage Mecca of what is truly hip -- the first thing I noticed were the life-size pictured that covered the walls -- half-clad muscular and glistening young men, frolicking around with pouty faced but beautiful young women who were wearing either size 2 short shorts with bikini tops or 3 layered sweaters. The tables were covered with overpriced shorts, shirts, and sweaters, strewn about by desperate customers searching for the perfect outfit. The sales people who roamed the floors were definitions of cool themselves -- ranging from age 16-22, they modeled their employee discounts in a haughty way which encouraged the customers to strive for their ultra-hip look. And strive the customers did. What was the most noticeable upon entering the store (besides the blaringly loud music which made me wonder if I was at a clothing store or a dance club) were the herds of desperate young men and women, who seemed to range from age 12-25, strutting around the store and searching for anything that had the name A&F on it. I can only imaging how many nights of baby-sitting it would take some of these eager teenagers to buy one sweater. The young custome...
The suggestion regarding the shopping mall becoming its own liturgy is understandable. People are often fascinated by the mall’s environments. In addition, the mall may become a place of worship to an extent. Spending unhealthy amounts of time at mall may have attachment effect. Nevertheless, attending the mall,
In a world ran by money, Paco Underhill has discovered a way for stores to generate a larger profit. In “The Science of Shopping”, Malcolm Gladwell reports on retail anthropologists to examine their theories they use. Gladwell does this to inform store managers on how to set up their stores to maximize their profits. Paco Underhill has shopping down to a science. Inside American Eagle, Meijer and Hollister his theories of the decompression zone, invariant right, and zoning can be found.
Beautiful scenery, delicious foods, and desirable accessories at your fingertips along with other enticements and wishes the mall offers as described by Carolyn Merchant as the modern Garden of Eden in her writing of “Eden Commodified.” Merchant is an award winning writer and professor at the University of California covering the subjects of environmental history and philosophy, making her an expert in the subject of human nature and our connection to the environment. She characterizes the combination of gardens, goods, and ornate architecture as heaven on earth a peaceful, clean, and orderly destination for rich and poor, old and young; however, is this really all she is saying?
I walked into the front of the store to see a crowd of people searching for a good grocery cart. One that wouldn’t wobble every second that you pushed it. I took a look at many of the faces as they were beginning or ending their shopping experience. The people walking in looking for a cart seemed unsure or not pleased to be there in the first place. While the people leaving looked happy and eager to get home. I took this as a clear sign that this was not the most enjoyable place to ...
As James Flink points out in The Automobile Age, the village store and the local banks were the businesses most vulnerable to the new competition (47). Robert E. Wood, former vice president of Sears, explains how businesses moved to the suburbs, "When the automobile reached the masses, it changed this condition [the funneling of consumers into the town centre] and made shopping mobile. In the great cities Sears located its stores well outside the main shopping districts, on cheap land, usually on arterial highways, with ample parking space (Wollen 13)." Thus city centers came to be seen as sites of congestion, whereas the surrounding areas were regarded as accessible and convenient. The rapid proliferation of shopping complexes outside of the city center in the 1950s left down town a crime-ridden wasteland of vacated stores. City centers no longer featured traditional shops; instead they contained gas stations, parking lots, and inns whose focus was on the travelers and their cars (Wollen 13).
Tremendous shopping centers, malls, even those little corner shops became an icon of American culture and its society. We are constantly manipulated by these so called convenient public places where escaping from it would be almost impossible. There are probably a 50% of chances that we will start our day with a cup of coffee in one, buy our afternoon lunch in the other one, or end up just walking around one. Shopping centers are everywhere; we cannot escape from it. Moreover, we do not want to escape from it as we are constantly underestimating the power and the real impact these places have on our society. Thus these places play a huge role in the process of socialization and are largely influencing the development of our society as a whole. In order to understand the way these places are emphasizing the gender differences and inequalities between the sexes, I decided to visit the local store Walmart and through an observation of its environment and its settings try to record its power of gendering. I was looking for a proof that gender is not merely an element of individual identity, but a socially constructed institutional phenomenon which is even imposed in our shopping centers and local stores.
A sociological observation was conducted at York dale Toronto shopping center and food court at various time intervals. There were different spectres of ethnicity and different ways people acted. I chose this mall because it is one of the largest malls in Canada and the problem of reactivity could be avoided.
Goss argues that developers and designers of the built environment, specifically shopping centers and malls, use the power of place and understanding the structural layout of the space to boost consumption of the retail profits. Shopping centers are separated from the downtown area of shopping either by distance and/or design. These establishments emerge for many to be the new heart and location for public and social life. In his article The "Magic of the Mall": An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment, Goss also argues that the regulation of the spaces within the mall creates an atmosphere of "community" rather than one that is "public".
...act, Langham Place is not alone. There are more and more shopping mall operates their business in the same manner as Langham Place. Though these shopping centres tried to make breakthrough using different methods, it seems that impressions of these shopping malls are blurred in eyes of public. Since these shopping malls are usually invested by large-scaled enterprises with great powers, merchants without resources to apply different tactics like these large-scaled shopping mall, will one day be eliminated. Those survivors will become copies of one another. As Shoppers' Paradise famous for selling products with different characteristics, if similar shopping malls are seen everywhere and merchants with distinguishing feature disappears, Hong Kong will soon lose its competitiveness among tourists. Resent among society may also arise and raise different social problems.
General indicators from the survey reflect a preference to the Springdale Mall for shoppers, even when evaluating the smallest demographic group in the sample population. The West Mall continues to rate on the lowest end of the survey with shoppers, below the Downtown Area. Using a 95% confidence interval helps ensure the maximum likely error a random shopper will differ in opinion from the point estimate results of the Springdale Shopping Survey.
"There's No Place like the Mall: U.S. Shoppers Unplug." Newswire. Nielsen, 23 May 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
Going to the mall is like being at a zoo. Herds of inconsiderate teenagers crowd the walkways, girls fight over the best pair of shoes, and the merchandise is thrown all over the place. Imagine being able to have a stress free day of shopping without annoying kids running around and the ease of looking at perfect displays that have not been touched by the grimy hands of children. If you could eliminate the younger population from the mall, shopping would be much easier for everyone. Parents can enjoy their day out, girls-day won’t be interrupted by kids running a muck in the store, the employees jobs will be easier by not having to fix the displays that were messed up by children, and the amount of merchandise stolen will decrease if the younger population sticks to online shopping! Shopping