informal assignment #4

Last Thursday we went to Valley Fair to conduct a very interesting field work, study the behavior of the people there and the mall itself. I went to Victoria’s Secret, Forever 21, Hot Topic, and Disney, etc. Although I don’t like malls nor I am a mall goer, with two girls’ company, I was able to enjoy this trip and learned something from it. The mall has so many features that I didn’t realize or even pay attention to, which allow Valley Fair to provide sufficient amount of leisure and entertainment to its customers, and keeps them coming.

The primary purpose of Valley Fair is shopping, it’s the most important reason why Valley Fair is successful and why so many people go there. Eighty percent of the stores at Valley Fair sell clothes or other products. People from the entire bay area go to Valley Fair to buy clothes. One thing I found crucial about the stores inside VF is their targets. The prices of the wears at most of the stores are at middle price, around thirty to fifty dollars, this shows that the consumers that the stores cater are in middle or upper middle class.

The second possibility of Valley Fair is to provide utility like phone service and hair dressing. Malls that are so big like Valley Fair tend to have this “all in one” ambition, where you can find whatever you need in it. Walking around the mall, you can find not only fashion stores, but also stores that provides hair styling, stores sell phone plans, stores sell toys, stores sell watches, stores sell furniture’s, basically anything you will need in life can be found in this mall, in general, Valley Fair covers the majority of the needs, but not all, if possible.

Another service Valley Fair and other malls provide is leisure, entertainment and a space for people to hangout.  Typically people go to Valley Fair without any specific purposes. Although it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any people who go there and legitimately want to buy stuff, more people just go to the mall with their friends and walk around. The malls provide such space for those people do so and the owners of the malls are more than happy to see people come to the mall, even without any particular reason, but as long as they are walking inside, as long as they are browsing the sales, there will be changes for them to make purchases.

Talking about problems within the mall establishment, there are some, but they don’t really matter that much. The biggest problem would be the “all in one” feature. I have to admit that it is very convenient for people to go in and get all they need at one place, but no matter how big the mall is, it can not provide all the services, and then the question will be that should the mall big this big? Because the size of the mall, it will limit the competition, which monopolize the mall, just like the example of the downtown San Jose we discussed in class.

Despite the fact that a person can find most of stuff he needs in the mall, the level of the service provided at the stores aren’t the best compare to other specialized stores, this gives another reason that malls should be smaller in size and have more specialized stores. Also the clothes stores can’t represent all the brands and styles, this leave the consumers fewer options to choose from in terms of styles, because the clothes they can buy is limited by the stores they go to. This is kind of like dictatorship where choices for people are limited.

The possibility for reform is slim because the structure is still strong and the business is running pretty well. Even though people can’t really find anything they want at this mall, they can always go to other malls or other stores that are not in a mall. If a reform within the mall system is required, the situation would be changed by adding more stores that are very focus in their product, which can provide the best service people, can get around the area. Also, the size of the mall should decrease and open more malls to promote competition and prosperity.