Malls: Worlds Best Money Maker

Scott Trembly

English 250 FD

Reading Journal #4

Malls: Worlds Best Money Maker

In the article It’s a Mall World After All by Mac Margolis, the author talks about the booming enterprise that is shopping centers. He shows how competitive and money making the shopping center and mall businesses can be all over the world. How the world is competing with each other, supplying jobs, even making it safe for youths in cities where gang violence reigns supreme. Parents feel way more comfortable knowing their kids are at the mall, playing around where there even sometimes can be 1,000 patrolmen working.

Mac Margolis’ article really interested me, being a guy that prides himself on how he looks and spends most of his money in a mall. I didn’t realize there were other malls in the world that have the same kind of thing going on as the Mall of America. I thought that it was an original thing up there in Minnesota. But apparently there are malls in Dubai and China with floor sizes outdoing the Pentagon, or taking the outdoor element out of skiing by putting one in the middle of the mall. So you can go buy your ski outfit for winter vacation and test it out right there next to the food court. I think that this business could actually be a booming success if the United States got more involved in it, because if you think about our society is partly based on appearance, both physically and morally. Physically in the sense that people are totally obsessed with image, and they would do anything even spend thousands of dollars to improve their wardrobe. Morally in the sense that people look down on others if they can’t afford “designer” clothing, when in all actuality, all clothing is designed by someone. Whether it be by the wonderful crew at Target or by Ralph Lauren. The cost of the clothing is what people really look at, not what it looks like on that person.

This article is a good example of how the world is consumed by image and supply and demand. Image in the sense that companies spend billions of dollars on malls to bring in more people to by their clothing. Supply and demand in the sense that in order to bring people into the mall to buy more things, they have to bring outrageous attractions into it.