Consumer Behavior in Shopping Centers - Essay Example

English Consumption Introduction Today’s shoppers are considerably indecisive. Manufacturers and advertisers are facilitating and improving on this aspect of modern consumerism. This is achievable through science and strategic packaging and advertising. The impulsive and uncertain nature of modern consumption dates as far back as the 1950s. Shopping centers and women played very crucial roles in the creation of the identity of the modern consumer (Hamilton 571). The following paper considers the impacts of people whose consuming behavior determines and shapes their desires, principles, identities, and sense of belonging. Shopping centers and catalogs are coded frameworks that do not just encourage people to purchase as a habit, but also more importantly, assist people in building their sense of identity. Shopping Centers and Consumer Behaviors Shopping centers are a preferred topic for the concerns of traditional conservatives (Flanders 104). Shopping centers also concern parties that find consumerism a crucial lifestyle. Consumerism is undoubtedly the traditional center of modern consumption. Critics of consumerism note that shopping centers have slowly turned into places where youth convene for social purposes. As a result, shopping centers slowly became places where senior citizens and the aged rarely came to socialize. Shopping centers attract people from different ethnic backgrounds, social status, age, and professional positions. According to Pressdee and John Fiske, shopping centers are public places formally, but in fact very selective socially (Flanders 104). Frequent goers of shopping centers do not exercise the freedom of speech or assembly. Owners of these shopping centers closely monitor and filter what goes in and out of their businesses’ premises. For instance, shopping centers inhibit the diverse multitude of companies and authorities that occupy open spaces. This is because such spaces apparently hide a prevalent private authority. Shopping centers practice comprehensive and clandestine authority not just in the regulation of conduct, but also in the building of the perceptible and audible public discussion (Flanders 105). The source of this consumption is what society today uses to relate to its identity, views, and desires. Consumption is the focal point of the discourse of fashion among outlying consumers. Teenagers, especially female tend to send a great deal of time and their parents’ money in shopping centers. The time spent by teenagers in shopping centers surpasses the money. Here, teenagers overcome the simple products they are used to at their respective homes. Instead, teenagers develop a proper sense of meaning of popular products displayed and sold in shopping centers. By moving around within shopping centers, teenagers fix themselves in lexis of American tradition. Such teenagers move within a huge dictionary disguised as a mall. Evidently, shops within malls hang a range of identities on their shelves and figurines. The same stores have windows showing intricate cases of serious consumption that do not just send what clothing is, but what the clothing represents as well. Smart and sharp-eyed teenagers walking around ordinary shopping centers develop a skill with the language of products on display and sale (Flanders 105). Moving from display to display and watching the behavior of other shoppers, teenagers learn an entire new tradition exists in shopping centers. For instance, store windows apply “downshift factors” of sarcasm and irony, approaches of reverse psychology, and reference. Shopping centers offer models of stylish, economical, flamboyant, and straightforward expression (Gladwell 1996). Collectively, these are elements of composition, which bring the upper class status to the minds of shopping teenagers. Consumerism, particularly in shopping centers, is an instructive behavior (Flanders 105). For decades, shopping has been a woman’s opportunity to escape household confines. In the process, women took pleasure in the company of their peers at shopping centers. The development of a woman’s function as one of catering to her family’s needs made her exit legitimate. Shopping offered an instance for women to spend lengthy periods in the companionship of their peers in the absence of their husbands. In shopping centers, women could trade information and ideas, request advice, and get support from friends. The same women nurtured their daughters around this way of life. More and more, women brought their daughters along to their peers’ shopping sprees and lunches in shopping centers. Such apprenticeship gradually created, reproduced, and rebuilt communities based on consumerism. Building an identity in the company of peers and absence of husbands was produced through a culture that built women as shoppers (Flanders 106). The same women were dependent on the bonds of consumer bases. The same way women depended on their husbands for overall financial support, they depended on their husbands for a method for developing their identities too. Evidently, women were unable to represent themselves through products without their husbands’ financial support or overall financial support. Without money, women could not partake in the female part of society widely associated with shopping. As a result, the shopping culture of America slowly made women’s identities highly dependent on men’s support for appropriate function. Shopping is a practice that has surpassed its original demographic confines (Flanders 107). People do not have to move physically to shop anymore. The invention of direct post catalogs, ordering services available for twenty-four hours, and more importantly online shopping services allow people to shop anywhere and anytime. The variety of semiotic messages displayed on store windows in shopping centers required physical attention. This is not the case anymore as shoppers can go about consumption without leaving their homes. The company or dialogue of peers once enjoyed by traditional shoppers is no longer mandatory. Solitude is enough to practice consumerism for the modern shopper. Sharing direct post catalogs strengthens community catalogs formed through consumerism (Flanders 108). A range of semiotic-associated catalogs reified and expounded these developed identities. More specifically, direct mail companies would brand a shopper a gardener when he or she orders a shovel and pack of seeds or fertilizer. As a result, the shopper would slowly have a tone of catalogs from farming and botany firms. These firms might grow their products to lure different appearances of the shopping identities they react to and build. In this case, a firm selling farming supplies would release a catalog wherein a group of individuals varied in age, cultural backgrounds, and professionalism. The company would ensure the catalog reaches the gardening consumer, while stressing aesthetics and a green agenda. Such catalogs do not address the needs of their target customers, but the development of the consumers’ identities. According to Thomas Hine, the meaning of a simple package might in fact be more complex than its content (Flanders 91). This is a counterargument of Flanders’ views. The producers of cereal packages and perfume bottles invest vast resources into their strategic shape and design for sale in shopping centers. These aspects of packaging stimulate consumption, which is largely unknown by the buyers. The development of bottles, boxes, cans, and cylinders over the past five decades entails numerous “secret meanings” (Flanders 91). For manufacturers, packing is the important and last phase of production that reckons the product’s entre promotion campaign. The experience of today’s shopper depends on the results of experimented shoppers during the 1960s and 1970s. The same production and marketing approaches apply to the modern consumer, particularly in shopping centers. Conclusion Shopping centers and catalogs are coded frameworks that do not just encourage people to purchase as a habit, but also more importantly, assist people in building their sense of identity. The traditional and individual packaging is both interesting and infuriating. Packaging offers a redeeming aspect of life through its assurance of competitive self-creation (Flanders 91). At the same time, packaging presents a terrifying aspect of modern lifestyles in its meaning that everything ought to be dependent on the cruel discipline of wide consumer bases. At one point, Americans were inactive consumers of their tradition and competitive packagers of their identity that can be a hectic and desolate combination. Works Cited Flanders, Judith. Consuming Passions. New York: HarperPress, 2006. Print. Gladwell, Malcolm. The Science of Shopping. 1996, Nov 4. Reporter At Large, The New Yorker-Archive. Web. 2014, July 16. Hamilton, Clive. Consumerism, Self-creation and Prospects for a New Ecological Consciousness. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18 (2010): 571–575. Print. Read More