Representation Of Identities Of Shoppers And Shopping Malls In The Klang Valley, Malaysia: A Study Of Sungei Wang Plaza, Sunway Pyramid And Gardens Mall

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Date
2013-05
Authors
Tan, Huey Pyng
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Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This research aims at studying identity of shopping malls through elements such as architecture, shoppers, tenant mix, and festivals decorations. Three popular shopping malls in Klang Valley – the Sungei Wang Plaza, Sunway Pyramid, and Gardens Mall are chosen as the research sites. Participant observation, focus group, in-depth interview, and artifact collection were adopted to obtain primary and secondary data for coding analysis. The major findings are firstly, shopping malls showed obvious representations of corporate identity. Secondly, shoppers associate shopping and shopping malls to economic, social, and psychological activities in terms of the elements of convenience, comfort, and class identity. Thirdly, shoppers are more concerned and conscious in representing status identity, though gender and ethnicity are represented as well. This corresponds with the shopping malls representation of corporate identities that emphasizes class more than other social identities. Representations and associations processes are influenced strongly by power and context, amongst others are the historical, economic, political, technological, social, cultural, and religious discourses. The findings enable formation of the circuit of shopping culture and the shopping ideology being the central meaning. The shopping malls carry the character of an unpurposefully-purposeful hegemonic that represents mainly the corporate identities with business goals of maximizing profits. However, the self-centred yet consciously-unconscious shoppers grant their consensual acceptance to the shopping malls ideology. They “willingly” and “voluntarily” assimilate with the hegemony and convinced that it is subject to their interests.
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Keywords
Shoppers And Shopping Malls , Klang Valley, Malaysia
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