Page 67 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

people to stay longer. Essentially, the more consumption items that are fused, the
longer people will stay in the venue to which they have been attracted in the first
58 place. In the extreme, the aim is to create a destination, somewhere that people go
to as a significant venue that will keep them there for some time. As destinations,
hybrid consumption locations become venues akin to holiday destinations. The
merging of different orders of consumption, particularly when accompanied by
theming, creates a spectacular consumption site, which frequently evinces a sense
of awe, partly because of its size but also partly because of its innovativeness in
bringing together unusual types of consumption.
The reality of the ‘stay longer’ principle can be detected in the comments of many
designers and managers of late modern consumption destinations, several of which
will be encountered again in this chapter. Goss quotes a senior vice-president of
leasing and marketing with respect to shopping malls in the US as saying: ‘Our sur-
veys show [that] the amount of spending is related directly to the amount of time
spent at centers. …Anything that can prolong shoppers’ visits are [sic] in our best
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interests overall’. He goes on to quote a marketing executive in connection with
Franklin Mills, one of the malls in the Mills Corporation stable which was referred
to in Chapter 2: ‘The entertainment at Franklin Mills keeps shoppers at the centre
for 3–4 hours, or twice as long as a regular mall [and] the more you give shoppers
2
to do, the longer they stay and the more they buy’. Crawford quotes a mall devel-
oper along similar lines: ‘The more needs you fulfill, the longer people stay’. 3
Layers of theming help to add to the sense of a destination and provide further
reasons for staying longer. According to the editor of Visual Merchandizing and
Store Design: ‘There is less leisure time today so people need to have fun. You have
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to use every trick in the book to keep those shoppers lingering longer’. A similar
point was made by the manager of Forum Shops which is attached to the Caesar’s
Palace Casino-Hotel in Las Vegas:
We like to compare ourselves with like Disneyland, where you feel good about where you are. And
when people feel good they tend to want to stay longer. So that’s what it’s all about – making
people feel good about where they are and making sure they have an enjoyable experience. If
they’re coming here to see the entertainment, that’s a plus. And in their way to seeing some of these
[audio-animatronic] shows they bypass Banana Republic or you know whatever other shops and
they might think ‘Gosh, you know what, I might love to get a new blouse for this evening’ or ‘I
might pick up that dress I saw in the evening.’ So it all … sort of, one hand shakes the other. 5

Similarly, Davis shows in connection with Sea World in San Diego how important
it is for the park to make sure that visitors stay as long as possible: the longer they
stay, the more they spend. Like all theme parks, they do this by trying to create
as many reasons as possible to stay in the park. This includes having a large number
of attractions and making sure that restaurants and other amenities are available.
It also includes increasing the tactile emphasis of some attractions, since, accord-
ing to the vice-president for entertainment ‘people stay longer if entertainment is less
passive, less dependent on just watching and more physically involving’. 6