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Work on the geographies of consumption has expanded speedily in the last two decades, bringing aspects of both the economic and the cultural spheres together.

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Traditionally, studies dealing with the economic perspective place their focus on the retail site and economic activities. The main concerns in this type of studies include retail organisation, corporate strategy (Clark, 1993), market structures (Christopherson, 1993, Clark, 1994), consumer decision (Mittelstaedt et al., 1977) and store location (Guy, 1980). But in the last two decades, there has been a ‘cultural turn’ in the social studies of the economy (Du Gay, 1997, Ray and Sayer, 1999). It is argued that the economy is inseparable from culture since there are more and more cultural goods, such as fashion and literature, produced and circulated through the market and by mass media. Symbolic meanings, popular cultures, and identities have been connected with economic studies. For example, Bocock (1993) considers consumption as an active process which relates to self-identification. In order to become what one wants to be, the individual has to devote himself/herself to consumption. And because identity is not about class, race or other structural status, the initiative to consume is especially significant in creating identity. Consumption is the key through which individuals position themselves. Featherstone (1991) creates a term “aestheticisation of everyday life” to describe how consumers actively utilise signs to construct and express their daily life. Featherstone indicates that daily life is actually an artistic work to a certain extent as through consumption people are able to follow their own will to use commodities, clothes, and even experiences to create the life they desire. The ‘cultural turn’ encourages geographers to break the boundaries of geography itself and overlaps with studies in other disciplines. This cultural turn has brought geographers from focusing on the economic dimension on retail spaces per se to carefully consider how culture and economy are entangled through practices and therefore to overcome the separation of economic and cultural geographies. Consumption is not only culturally driven, but also socially and spatially driven (Frith, 1978, Valentine, 1995, Zukin, 1998).

Zukin (1998) indicated that the environment, especially in the cities, is lived in spaces

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of consumption. Zukin argues that citizens are able to spend more time (non-work time) on consumption because the modes of economic activities have changed from Fordism to post-Fordism and a more flexible system of production. Built-up retail spaces are, therefore, developed through local area planning schemes, which might be supported by local governments. Moreover, Zukin (1998) argued that consumption in such spaces is not purely economical, rather it is also spatial, social and cultural. Retail spaces, such as malls and shopping districts, are environments created with a clear purpose to encourage the consumption of goods and services. These retail spaces normally offer amenities through restaurants, cafes and theatres, to evoke and satisfy citizens’ and consumers’ desires. What we consume are not only goods and services but also other things, such as the environment, which is out of the categories of goods and services.

In this sense, based on the spatial arrangement, associations, and display of commodities (including goods and services), retail spaces are sites for the displaying, performing, consuming and producing of symbols through consumption practices (1998).

Most of the current researches on retail spaces mainly focus in two fields. The first one concentrates on the production of spaces to examine how these are produced by the retailer to promote sales. Studies include spectacularly built environments such as shopping centres, mega malls and theme parks. Ritzer (1999) introduces the idea of

‘cathedrals of consumption’ to explain how spectacular retail spaces are developed to allow, encourage, induce and even seduce consumers to pay for as many products as they can, including tangible goods and intangible services. The central idea of the

‘cathedrals of consumption’ is different from traditional political economic studies:

people who are exploited are not labourers/workers but consumers. The ‘cathedrals of consumption’ display themselves in an enchanting form to which consumers can

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undertake pilgrimages. The retail spaces thus become locations where people are able to actively practice the religion of consumption. Cathedrals of consumption, in Ritzer’s argument, are aggregates of material space, workers’ labour, services, ways of selling and so on. Therefore, what enables consumers to purchase is not only the spatial form and its function, but also the “setting” or “structure” of cathedrals of consumption (Ritzer, 1999: 6).

Among all the spectacular retail spaces, shopping malls are widely regarded as one of the iconic examples. In his essay The ‘Magic of the Mall’, Goss (1993) examines the form, function and meaning of shopping malls to understand how they are constructed by retailers and designers to facilitate consumption and to manipulate consumers in order to promote purchase and potentiate revenue. While we might consider shopping malls as simply convenient sites for us to do one-stop-shopping, there are carefully regulated by an abundance of techniques to promote or to prevent some consumer behaviours. For example, escalator are located in certain places to make consumers pass as many shopfronts as possible and to prevent consumers from leaving sales floors too quickly. Moreover, as malls are privately owned retail spaces rather than public places, security staff is there to discourage certain types of behaviour and some groups of visitors (e.g. the homeless).

Apart from the functions and forms served to enhance consumption, shopping malls are also powerful semiotic systems. Shopping malls may seen to be innocent and authentic, but they are places “where Spanish galleons sail up Main Street past Marks and Spencer to put in at "New Orleans", where everything is tame and happy shoppers mingle with smiling dolphins” (Shields, 1989: 154). By using particular objects and settings to make various effects which brings Baudrillardian simulacrum of different

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time and space, the designers/retailers create a ‘spatiotemporal haze’ (Shields, 1989:

152). The calculation of retail capitalism in the mall is packed, disguised, and shown as fantasy tour in the dream world for consumers to enter and realise their dreams. Goss (1999), drawing on North American shopping experiences, demonstrate how themes used in shopping malls reflect the desire that consumers want to experience something special and extravagant. Goss goes on to argue that shopping malls are built environments to “assuage collective guilt over conspicuous consumption” (Goss, 1993:

19) through architecture, interior design and themes that blur the link between shopping and purchase. Shopping malls, Goss (1999: 71) notes, “bringing together collective myth and individual memory and fantasy” to provide psychological comfort like religion does. Studies of shopping malls demonstrate how retail spaces are imagined, planned, and produced by the producers (architects, designers, mall owners and retailers) to allure as well as regulate consumers’ shopping practices. Those studies also indicate the change of design in retail spaces. Previously, the design of retail spaces was more about on the function and efficiency; but now the design has to incorporate culturally charged symbols (Gottdiener, 2001). The above researches on shopping malls show that spectacular retail spaces are produced by entrepreneurs as entertainment sites to attract, allure, and at the same time, also to constrain and discipline the shoppers.

The second type of the current researches on retail spaces is to shift the focus on retailers to consumers. This type of work emphasis on the consumption of retail spaces to understand how consumers actively interpret meanings of the spaces and use the spaces for their own purposes. With the acknowledgement of the empirical dimension of consumption—experience— studies of consumption are able to place the concerns from an economic context per se on to the integration with social, cultural, and

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geographical spheres. That is, although the act of purchase is essential to consumption, there are other significant elements which need to be considered, especially when the significant elements are indivisible from the transaction. In a number of ethnographic studies on young people, it is shown that teenagers are ‘unacceptable flaneurs’ who use the mall as a place to hang out (Matthews et al., 2000, White, 1993, Vanderbeck and Johnson, 2000). Although in this case young people is not imbued with a conscious intention of going against the retailers in terms of using the malls for their own good, as a safe environment the malls are ideal for young people to do something beyond the commercial function of the malls—specifically to linger around and to meet friends.

The way how teenagers ‘misuse’ shopping malls demonstrates the potential that consumers have to escape from the manipulation of the producers. With the same interest on shopping malls, Shields (1989) places his focus on the ways in which consumers use malls in his investigation on the West Edmonton Mall in Canada. Shields discover that shoppers in many occasions use the well-controlled retail space in ways that contest the control or disregarding the control. Shoppers, in Shields’s research, have their own cultural ideas and ideological principles that might not be the same as what retailers intend to state. West Edmonton Mall therefore does not only “promote a new representation of space and encourages the elaboration of the corresponding spatial practice of [unmanageable consumers] but also constructs […] a space of representation, a space in which the social imaginary is opened to new visions”

(Shields, 1989: 153). Although studies on shopping malls from the perspective of production stress how consumers are overwhelmed by the spectacular consumption environments, the above studies of shopping malls show that the spell of the malls may not always work on consumers.

Apart from the big commercial spaces, some geographers dedicate their attention on

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alternative consumption sites, such as second-hand stores (Chattoe, 2000), charity shops (Gregson et al., 2002) and car-boot sales (Gregson and Crewe, 1997b). These studies focus on issues around value, authenticity and appropriation of particular styles and, therefore, develop an understanding about the performance, the distinction and the spectacular in the practices. The other emerging studies on sites of consumption are home (Jackson and Moore, 1995), body (Bell and Valentine, 1997, Lupton, 1996), and Internet (Miller and Slater, 2000). These works on the various sites of consumption show the ways in which the consumption practice connect to different spatialities.

Studies within these two types offer an insightful understanding of the interaction between spaces and consumers, and between spaces and retailers. However, the outcome from these studies raises questions of consumer agency. In recognising the dualistic viewpoint of consumer agency in existing studies, Kozinets et al. (2004) explore the ludic behaviours and identified elements of agency in themed retail environments. Kozinets et al. (2004) argue that the consumers are able to resist the rules of those themed venue despite the fact that those spaces are overpowering.

Through the close examination on the tactical moves of the consumers and the counter moves of the marketers, Kozinets et al. (2004) propose the concept of ‘interagency’ to see the relationship between consumers and retailers in such spectacular site as dialectical rather than simply oppositional. Studies of Gregson and Crewe (1997a, 1997b) also show that the understanding of both main types on retail spaces are partial because the connection between retailers and consumers is overlooked.

Retailers may ensnare consumers through the spatial arrangement of their shops;

consumers choose to shop or not to shop in certain business establishments according to their preferences. In other words, spaces of consumption influence, and are influenced by, both retailers and consumers. Through investigate the ways in which people participate and construct themselves in car-boot sales, Gregson and Crewe

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(1997a, 1997b) notice sellers and buyers negotiate to each other and together perform retailing/consumption in every interaction. The practices of retailing and shopping are not in opposition, but rather, they are in constant negotiation and are co-constituted.

For Gregson and Crewe, the spaces of car-boot sales are living theatres in which both vendors and buyers perform and celebrate unconventional retailing and shopping together. Therefore, as Gregson and Crewe indicate, both retailers and consumers should be taken into account when investigating spaces of consumption. Gregson and Crewe also note that there is a need to acknowledge the diversity of consumption places because the occurrence and process of consumption is different in a specific geographical context. The exploration of different sites of consumption will offer insights to how a certain type of consumption practice link to specific retail/consumption spaces.