Is Shopping Experience a Commodity

Is the shopping experience a commodity?

Certainly not, a simple study of the biggest shopping centers in the world would show that the variety of stores presents to the customers different optionsfrom one region to another; and that customer purchasing patterns lean towards the local, instead of the global, product offered. In fact, we can see that the so-called “global” store concept can beapplied only to a small number of companies whose brands have been able to reach the different type of preferences of purchasers.

Comparing shopping center’s store directories around the world canverify that variety, as some of us would imagine, does exist, and that shoppers around the world do not acquire products from a reduced number of stores that carry the same marketing strategy in everycountry.

Cartoon 6 claims that the global shopping center experience involves a walk through a place dominated by a retail oligopoly of a small number of stores offering the same type of productregardless of personal preferences, regional situation, weather patterns, eating or drinking habits, religion, etc. such critique is faulted by nature.

To assess the claim addressed by the cartoon,what can be done as a first and foremost analysis is a study of the stores located at some of the most important shopping centers around the world. According to research focused on the history andevolution of shopping malls, headed by Emil Pocock at Eastern Connecticut State University, the list of the world’s largest shopping centers holds a majority of centers in Asia, a shift from theincumbents some years ago, mainly from the US.

Five large malls located in different regions were selected: The Berjaya Times Square at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Dom Pedro Shopping Center at Sao Paulo,Brazil; The Dubai Mall at Dubai, UAE; Sawgrass Mills at Florida, USA; and La Maquinista at Barcelona, Spain.

By analyzing the stores directories, it can be clearly seen that store homogeneity is far...