vitamin c. Put the heart back into shopping!

You probably know mall-walking is a well-known form of exercise. Malls abroad, and some in India, have mall walking facilities, opening their doors ahead of business hours to let walkers use their space to stay fit. But try and find a place to sit when you’re shopping at the mall, and chances are that there is little seating readily available for you to rest your weary bones.

You might have to walk quite far and huddle with another two or three people who are already occupying that bench. Or if you don’t have the energy, you could simply flop on the floor, as I see many people, young and old, do at some of the malls I visit.

Last week, I went to a big mall in town specifically to see if there was adequate seating for shoppers. One lifestyle store had sofas at a couple of spots on each floor of its two-storeyed store. Not so bad. Another store, not as big, had moved its sofa from the ground floor to just one spot on the first floor, near the check-out. This store is located near the exit too.

If you had approached the ground floor section at the end of your circumambulation, you would have no place to rest your aching feet for a while.

A question that occurred to me: Would some shoppers just leave? Would they think ‘I’m done, there’s nothing to lose if I don’t see one more store?’ I know I would, unless I was shopping with a vengeance. In another store, there were no seats.

Outside the stores, in the common area of the mall, there was very little ‘free seating’ – I had to walk from Phase Four to Phase One to find some. At the other places, people were sitting on the narrow ledges jutting out from beneath the railings that paved the corridors. There were quite a few coffee shops in the atrium and among the stores where we could go and catch our breath, for a price, of course.

At another mall, smaller but by no means small, there were no seats inside the atrium or inside the sprawling two-level lifestyle store it hosted.

I remember an aggrieved acquaintance, who worked at a lifestyle store in another mall, complaining that visitors would pour in just to enjoy the air-conditioning in the summers and leave without buying anything. After a while, the mall, one of the city’s earliest, switched off the air-conditioning inside the common area as well as the stores. It became a trial shopping there.

Understandably, business people would be upset at the idea of shoppers not purchasing anything but using their stores as a mere refuge from the heat. But hark back to the early days of modern retail and recollect what mall developers and retailers said: That malls provided an alternative to the existing forms of entertainment, which, in those days, were mainly the movies. It was the new family entertainment, we were told.

It still is. Families converge on malls and big stores in groups, and one can often see shoppers, sometimes men and women of a certain age search for seating or mutter that there is nowhere to sit. Mall owners are hoping that they will make a beeline to the nearest coffee shop to rest their poor feet but if time and money are concerns for those customers, that might not happen.

These customers may want to spend on clothes and footwear and all the other things that are sold in the mall, but not on sugary drinks. Studies have shown that there is a direct connection between visitors who come for entertainment, aggregate mall sales and growth in reputation.

Says Chennai-based Vasuki Kota, “Fifty-something shoppers like me really appreciate the charm of old-world stores such as Radha Silk Emporium or Man Mandir, where low, comfortable seating is offered graciously and one can settle down to choose between the geometric beauty of an Uppada or a gorgeous-hued Kanjivaram. I think the more business-like and chair-less ambience of the newer stores is a big put-off because, let’s face it, shopping is tiring work. Especially in malls, where one has to trudge down long corridors, it’s nice to be able to plonk oneself on even a simple stool once inside a shop. Feeling comfortable is even likely to tempt people to linger and, maybe, buy more too. So, it’s really in the store’s interest to always have a few chairs handy, for those who aren’t just looking but mean to buy.”

R. Sandhya, another shopper, points out that very often, in India, shopping is a family/group activity. Older women and children, even infants, are a part of the mix. She points to the chairs in most clothing and jewellery stores as proof that commerce can and should be humane. One could relax, spend time looking over the goods, even get a cup of tea and most likely would be warmed into buying something or buying more than planned. Compare that with today’s malls where a basic commodity like drinking water is not to be found easily, if it exists at all, or restaurants or cafes where you are not served any water but expected to buy a bottle.

Are we so mercenary as a people, as a culture, that we cannot spare a few more chairs and a few square feet for our customers? Won’t having rest facilities spur people to shop if they get a chance to pause now and then? It’s time, as Sandhya says, “to put the heart back into shopping”.

Vitamin C is a weekly dose of consumer empowerment

COMMENT NOW