Abstract:

This study aims to analyse how and on which units rationality as the basic principle of modern shopping mall management and the “enchantment strategies” concealed behind it are built. Shopping malls are not only locations where rationalized bureaucratic activities as the most explicit markers of modernism are manifest, but they are also spaces where enchantment, which has been humiliated by modernism, is put into service for fomenting the consumption. The study is a multidisciplinary and qualitative one based on literature review of various disciplines and consummated with observation. Enchantment techniques in shopping malls are evaluated with examples in the hope that it will contribute to the limited literature on the field. Central assumption of the article is that the shopping malls are structured according to disenchanted, modern bureaucratic principles, but for the sake of efficiency, they employ various enchantment strategies to direct individuals into consumption “over and above their needs”. The evaluations of seven exemplary units unfold the validity of the original assumption

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