Shopping Malls Won

It seems that buying bread, milk and pasta in a shop around the corner, ‘where everybody knows your name’, is about to become history, along with the traditional way of life. Small family-owned shops are being pushed out by large shopping malls, discounters, supermarkets and hypermarkets. The retail industry is booming, and that is good news for national economies, since it provides a stable market for farmers and other suppliers and creates a large volume of employment.

Retailers are essentially resellers – they buy products in large quantities from manufacturers or importers, either directly or through a wholesaler, and then sell smaller quantities to us, the consumers. While we normally associate retailing with big retail chains selling food and household items (Croatian Konzum, German Spar, US Wal-Mart, UK Tesco, French Carrefour, etc.), the term also refers to many specialty retailers such as Turbo Limach, Algoritam, IKEA, Gap and others. We will find most of these and more in every shopper’s Mecca – a shopping mall.

Today’s shopping malls have their origins in the covered markets and bazaars of the Middle Ages. The first modern shops typically represented the businesses where goods were produced (e.g. a bakery or tailor’s workshop) and sold just one type of product. The 19th century saw the emergence of the arcade – a roofed passageway with shops on one or both sides. The next step was the invention of the department store, offering a wide variety of goods (apparel, furniture, toiletries, cosmetics, toys, appliances, etc.) in several departments under one roof.

With the rise of suburban living in the United States, the first shopping mall (shopping centre) was built in the 1920s, incorporating elements from both the arcade and department store. In Britain, shopping malls are called retail parks, out-of-town shopping centres or shopping precincts. Despite the recent shopping mall craze in Croatia, some more old-fashioned types of retail businesses have survived, such as markets with their fresh produce, honey-tongued sellers and cigarette kiosks, and they seem to have lost none of their appeal, unlike in some other European cities where they have virtually disappeared.

Some shops still use the counter service, where goods are handed to the customers over the counter by a shop assistant. This is common among shops selling expensive items such as jewellery, or controlled items like medicines. The first supermarket opened in the US in the 1920s, marking a new era in retail of self-service shops, where goods may be handled and examined freely prior to purchase. Nowadays, for those who wish to save time, there is a growing online retail sector, where products are chosen from a catalogue, television channel or website and ordered via mail, telephone or online. Some retailers, such as Amazon.com, exist solely online.