For Fridays fieldwork assignment I decided spend an hour walking the aisles of the local North Adams Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has always been very confusing to me as a consumer. I have a gut reaction of hatred to not only what Wal-Mart stands for as corporation, but also as a retail space, yet I always find something to buy there. What is even more confusing is that while Wal-Mart and Target are almost identical in every way, I have only ambivalent feelings toward the latter. Klein would tell me that my extreme difference in taste for identical brands have come from the difference in branding styles. Target spends a great deal of money on advertising that is very reminiscent to the advertising used buy Old Navy or the Gap: “Stylish but also simple enough to be navigated by the everyday person.” While Wal-Mart seems to have spent much less on branding, choosing to only to highlight its inexpensive nature. The second reason for hating Wal-Mart likely tied the media’s love for pointing out the faults in mega corporations. In the past decade it seems that Wal-Mart (in one way or another) has been associated with everything that is wrong in society. It is not unlikely that part of my hatred is simply a manifestation of that popular belief.
The Wal-Mart in North Adams is so basic that it is gloomy. Everything (the walls, the floors, and the shelves) are whitewashed to make their products stand out to the wandering eye of the customer. Everything in the store is designed to cater to the impulses of the wanderer. The lights in the store are bright enough (so that they give me a blinding headache) so that customers can easily lose track of time. There is no music, outside of the entertainment section, and there are really no audible signs of life beyond the constant beeping of the checkout counters. The inside of the Wal-Mart bears no resemblance the perfect shopping environment that Jon Goss recommends to his readers. Goss’s examples of successful shopping centers were designed to “restore a sense of lost commitment and belonging…counteract the phenomenon of alienation, isolation, and loneliness… (Magic of the Mall, p. 23). Instead Wal-Mart shoppers are left to expel their feelings of isolation and boredom through the purchase of unnecessary goods at rock bottom prices.
Wal-Mart’s only real branding image is the motto “We Sell for Less” and their stores stick rigidly to that standard. There are really no other brands openly advertised in the store (even though Wal-Mart produces nothing under their own brand name). In terms of signage, the only advertisements designed to catch the eyes of the consumer are large displays at the end of every isle advertising the price of a particular item. Each advertisement is titled with one of three slogans, “‘Unbeatable Prices,’ ‘Roll Back,’ and ‘Clearance.’” None of the advertisements attempt to lie to me about the quality of the products or even deceive me into connecting their products with some positive experience. The only message is that: when you go to Wal-Mart you are saving money while in the act of spending it. It is the design of the store that makes the customers spend the money that they saved (and more) before leaving.
In Gross’s article he quotes a leader in marketing who points out that the amount of consumer spending is directly correlated to the amount of time spent in shopping spaces. The goal of a well designed shopping center is to keep the shoppers in the store for the maximum length of time. It is the design scheme that I believe to be one of the central pillars of Wal-Mart’s success. Designed as a one stop shopping location, where customers can get everything from cereal to baby clothing to gun supplies and everything in between, Wal-Mart attracts customers who come with the mindset that they are going to shop a wide range of products. They believe that by going to Wal-Mart they will save both money and time. In my experience of shopping at Wal-Mart I have spent more money and time than I had ever intended.
At the entrance of Wal-Mart there is a wide path that goes strait and right (In class we talked about how over 80% of people who walk in a store walk immediately to the right) and another path that goes directly left, in front of the checkout lines. These two large paths connect to make a circle that brings the customer through every section of the store. The store is designed so that customers walk through on a path that maximizes both the time spent in the store and the variety of products that he or she comes in contact with. It is very difficult to walk into a Wal-Mart and quickly find a specific item. While sections are marked by signs hanging from the ceiling, the customer is only able to see the sign of the section directly in front of them. Wal-Mart provides no maps for customers and is severely understaffed so there is nobody to help give directions. Customers are left to wander the store with the hope that by some stroke of luck will come across the items which they came to buy. So, to make use of their time wandering, Wal-Mart provides them with an extra large shopping cart to fill with goods that they originally had no idea intention of buying. It is no wonder that American garages no longer have any space available to park cars.
After completing the prescribed path around the Wal-Mart I took a seat on the only bench that I could find in the store. I tried a hard to imagine Wal-Mart as a kind of consumer civic center, but I realized that only thing that it brought to the community was cheap place to consume. It had no place for people to congregate, no entertainment (outside of shopping), and it did not seem to support anything in the community. I watched the people that passed me; mostly couples because it was 8 pm on a Thursday night, who just seemed to wander past, without talking, pushing carts filled to the brim with goods. I truly felt as though I was trapped in a live picture of the “sameness” which Adorno and Horkheimer had warned had infected the developed world. These people consumed in mass quantities as though they had a choice (a choice that would set them apart from their peers), but in reality they all ended up being the same. Maybe it is when you leave Wal-Mart, or any other place of mass consumption, that you are truly able to be an individual again.
No comments:
Post a Comment