Today's Consumer Culture: Bought Self-worth and Artificial Happiness

Sociological Observations at the Hanover Mall The North Hanover Mall is an average shopping center with various stores and small attractions. Typically, the mall is not over-crowded; however, during the evenings and weekends it is well-traveled. There are the average chain stores such as JCPenny’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hallmark, and Bath and Body Works. Likewise, there are some smaller, lesser known stores, for example, a few nail and hair salons, cafes, a pizza shop, and a sports apparel store. In general, there is a diverse mix of people shopping, from ethnicity to ages and group sizes. The night I choose to do my social observation the mall was much busier than I had anticipated. There was a Halloween event and an antique car show; both circumstances brought more individuals than usual into the shopping complex.

According, the United State Census Bureau, the U.S. population is increasing, every eight seconds a child is born. With the population increasing sort of rapidly the construction of new neighborhoods it is going to be necessary to house these prospering families. Also, the establishment of stores are going to be needed. Therefore, neighborhood stores are going to become available and malls too, but they both are going to vary in certain aspects. Neighborhood stores are stores that provides accommodations to the locals. Malls, on the other hand, are large buildings made of multiple competitive retails stores. Nevertheless, neighborhood stores and malls seem very similar, but when looking at their square footages, remoteness from home, and marketability, they are quite different.

Ritual Assignment Pointing and sprinting from store to store, bags in hand and wallet held tight. The sounds of screaming, laughing, and talking fill the space. Cash registers beaming and cards being swiped. There’s just no other place like this; a shopping mall. Today, buying clothes or items of interest is highly popular. All of one’s favorite stores feet away from each other, this ritual is composed of elements that might not seem very evident without looking close enough. At the International Plaza in beautiful Tampa Florida, I conducted observations and my own experiences as well to analysis this ritual as a cultural phenomenon. Through this research, we can understand the true meaning of a shopping mall.

To keep a local suburban regional shopping mall from reaching its decline, there are a few things that must be done to keep your mall relevant in today’s society. One must spend time and money during the maturity phase to keep with today’s trends. Getting more or newer department or anchor stores may help to draw in business. Then fill the other empty spaces with specialty stores, offering products that consumers can’t get anywhere else. Another option for managers is to find a niche in the community that will draw consumers in.

Through his piece “Enclosed. Encyclopedic. Endured: the Mall of America.” David Guterson shares his experience of the Mall of America as it opened and its effects of the American culture. From sharing statistics about the amount of jobs available, the number of parking spots, or how much cash is dispersed each week from just the ATMs; Guterson allows readers to feel the massive scale of the mall. He shares stories of the people he met and his own views on the mall, and what it says about America and its people’s values. Guterson makes it clear that Americans have become too absorbed with the thoughts of materialistic belongings; and a mall, such as the Mall of America, only makes those thoughts that much worse and destroys the people’s

Human needs in the past have been satisfied by marketplaces that are community driven. It is then he claims, that the lack of communal intention that makes the Mall of America, and other malls unhealthy and unnatural. Guterson writes that malls void of community, are not marketplaces, but are rather attractions set on profit. The marketing behind the Mall of America is aimed at growing tourism, and making the mall a symbol of America and American culture. This gimmick has proved to be successful as over 700,000 people from foreign countries visit the mall every year (Guterson, 284). The attention the mall is receiving from the rest of the globe suggests that as Guterson writes, “The concept of shopping in a frivolous atmosphere, concocted to loosen consumers’ wallets, is poised to proliferate globally” (Guterson, 284). As American malls continue to be lucrative, the science of controlling shoppers will only become more present around the world. Guterson claims that the fantasy environments that malls create are so powerful that they can inspire addiction to the excitability and pleasures that malls create (Guterson, 284). Guterson warns against the future of megamalls, pointing out the emptiness that they can create inside us. After standing on the roof of the Mall of America, Guterson understands that American culture is not the modern American mall. Rather, it is the fields and farms that

It was the growing mistrust of this relatively new communist nation that led to the eventual fear of a global conflict between the two ideologies. This fear that was beginning to grip the American public was not only due the increasing military threat of the Soviet Union but also for fear of another internal economic crisis. The majority of the American population during this period directly experienced the great depression of the nineteen thirties the prosperity that proceeded it. Now America was in a state of postwar prosperity again and the standard of living had dramatically increased for the majority of the American public over the past twenty years. This rising middle class now saw their improved economic independence being threatened not only from a domestic economic disaster but also from a new outside force, Communism. Communism to the American people was a threat to the American dream, the American way of life, and most important to the basic freedoms and values that this country was

During this time, the United States and Soviet Union competed with each other on a technological level as opposed to a militaristic one. Each country would present consumer products that their respective citizens can attain. Even at this point, Khrushchev’s presentation of what the average person in Eastern Europe can have to Nixon and the United States was relatively lacking; even though Khrushchev’s philosophy was more on building products and infrastructure for the benefit of future generations to truly compete with America, the reality failed to meet expectations (wiki cite) as the communist regimes were ineffective in providing “economic growth, consumer culture, and shopping as leisure” to a similar rate as their western counterparts (Stone

He declared that anything less, “constitutes a threat to our democratic processes.” Post WWII, the rebuilding of Europe meant a need for goods. This massive demand fueled the consumer-oriented sector of the U.S. economy. Citizens touted a free open market system of capitalism while the Soviet Union touted communism. Each side deemed their system as superior, claiming greater freedom for their population. Americans bought and sold vast amounts of consumer goods to help the economy grow. This led to U.S. global economic domination. This “Consumer culture demonstrated the superiority of the American way of life to communism and virtually redefined the nation’s historic mission to extend freedom to other countries” (Foner 878).

My original insight on this article is that New England’s second largest city was not doing the right research that they needed to come up with a good strategic plan for the community. I believe that the city was more concerned on making a profit when I think they should have been more concerned with the locals needs and wants. In recent years, many malls have been struggling to keep their doors open and have even reconstructed them into a different kind of mall by offering fitness centers and even adding grocery stores to replace the failing department stores. At first, I thought that the city should be considered adding some new features to the malls rather than demolishing these malls all together and replacing them with new buildings. I

Paragraph 1 The Mall of America has Once you have the consumer at the mall, it is not enough to have them fulfill what they are there for, but to entice the consumer to want more. Example would be to add a small concert venue that would bring in concert goers for dinner, the concert and possible hotel stay.

The concept of free-market played an essential role in making American people in the 1960s believe that it is important for them to fight communism through any means possible. Consumerism had reached a point where it had become indispensable and the benefits that it brought along made it difficult and virtually impossible for the community to express interest in economic systems other than capitalism. One of the principal reasons why the Cold War occurred relates to the West's obsession with materialism and with the fact that this precious concept could be destroyed as a result of communist ideas pervading the Western society.

College Writing — Summary Kids in the Mall: Growing Up Controlled Malls becoming the new baby-sitters William Kowinski has written the article “Kids in the mall: Growing up controlled”, to highlight the ignorance of parents that exposes children to artificial environment of shopping malls. Kowinski argues that this exposure converts children into “pre-programmed consumers” and leads them to a premature adulthood, which affects their emotional development. To prove his argument, the writer relies upon several studies which reveal the importance of the role parents play in nurturing their children with “warmth” and “old-fashioned mothering”.

In 1959, American Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev came together at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, a “showcase of American consumer goods” (May 18), for “one of the most noted verbal sparring matches of the century,” aptly coined the “kitchen debate” (16). As Khrushchev applauded the Communist system and its hardworking women, Nixon “extolled the virtues of the American way of life” (16), emphasizing America’s “successful breadwinners supporting attractive homemakers in affluent suburban homes” (18). Although Nixon’s emphasis upon the suburban lifestyle may have successfully displayed America’s superiority in consumer goods, Nixon grossly “exaggerated the availability of the suburban home”

PROJECT NAME SMART TROLLEY FOR MALLS ------------------------------------------------- Aim: Design of Smart Trolleys for malls INTRODUCTION: ------------------------------------------------- Write by own: ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- In today’s ever fast growing world of boom the whole world is experiencing a fast growth. All the fundamental facilities are also growing. One such place where people can shop for almost everything is the mall.