Business | Features
Malls offer everything and nothing
When the weekend arrives and life switches to catching up with friends and family that you otherwise may have missed during a hectic working week, malls are frequently becoming the go-to destination of choice.
- By Neil Tunbridge, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:03 May 13, 2008
When the weekend arrives and life switches to catching up with friends and family that you otherwise may have missed during a hectic working week, malls are frequently becoming the go-to destination of choice.
They are there to serve the city-based populations that in the Middle East are demanding, time short, and in need of a social "pick-me-up".
Whilst they may not necessarily offer tranquility, they do offer somewhere that is likely to be able to cater to a variety of different requirements and needs.
Consequently no matter if you're in a group or on your own, whether you're after a bite to eat, or an inspirational store for a forgotten present or simply somewhere to pick up a book and relax with a coffee - malls increasingly have all the options.
Destination lifestyle
As a result mall developers in the region are gradually aiming to cram more into their malls, and as a result they are becoming true destination lifestyle malls. The upshot of this is that the possibilities and choices are endless and the malls increasingly vast.
Consequently then, it came as a surprise when at the weekend a friend proffered that they didn't wish to visit the particular mall in discussion, as there was nothing "to do" there; this got me thinking.
Breaking down the general developmental philosophy behind shopping malls and what they offer us as modern day solutions to community and social barriers, is something that I tend not to frequently mull over at the weekends.
However this statement really made me question the very foundations behind the way we behave as customers, and why we treat shopping malls that way we do.
In essence modern day malls are a convenience-orientated solution to making our life a little easier. They offer us choice and availability in one place, and yet at the same time they are increasingly being seen as places that, in a time of declining social neighbourliness offer us a place of refuge and community structure.
The point here though is what do we actually want from these places? Why do we feel the need to have to 'do something' at these malls and why can we not be satisfied with malls as they are i.e. sophisticated shopping destinations, that also offer a crossover of a few cultural and social interests. In essence why do we need them to offer us all the solutions?
In my humble opinion the problem really lies in our desire as shoppers to be able to have immediate access to what ever we like, whenever we like.
In essence a desire for immediate gratification in a society that demands fulfilment. This partly comes from the fact that as a population we are used to fingertip information and as a result our lives tend to operate in a similar fashion.
We desire everything to be in front of us and within easy reach, or not at all. As such, information is knowledge, knowledge is power, and the result is that we are now empowered customers who strive at any one time for an array of possibilities from which to make our choices.
Gratification
Consequently with the shopping mall becoming, or at least being seen as the go-to community destination we tend to want it to provide all the answers.
Not only does it need to be able to offer us the best choice of brands at the best price, but also a place to eat, somewhere to watch a film, something to keep the children occupied, a respite from the summer heat and, dare I say it, something for us 'to do'.
Far be it for me to attempt to write a 'state of the nation' style column, but as consumers we are becoming increasingly knowledgeable and as a result of which, we are imposing an ever increasing strain on the resources that we request of our malls.
This is all brought about because of our thirst for immediate mall based gratification; so lets try and think of this next time we are contemplating what to do at the weekend.
The writer is Head of GRMC Retail Services, Dubai.
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