shopping malls

This country has another shopping mall ! The concept of shopping mall has evolved a lot  in the period that I have been a close witness to Retail and related verticals. A decade and half ago , the maximum time I would spend at a mall would not exceed 2 hours . Two hours were what it took me , my better half and quarter-halves(?) to shop for groceries and window-shop . When the food-courts at the malls began to have more variety , our time at the mall increased by another hour. This , the dinner at the food court, was the carrot to draw the quarter-halves in our expedition. I strongly believe in 'the family that shops together stays together'. Then we saw the advent of cinema multiplexes at the malls . This made the weekly grocery expeditions evolve into an additional monthly cinema-cum-dinner-cum-grocery picnic. When I thought we had reached the end of evolution as far as shopping malls are concerned -- I heard a new concept - shopping resort ! Now this is different from the earlier mentioned forms of the mall . Here one does not speak about the hours you would spend , instead you speak about the number of days you would be in !

The food and entertainment sector within the malls have started getting larger with each stage of the evolution . The food court  had the choicest fast food options  . Fine dining too has arrived at the malls and has become an available choice.

While all these bigger , better Malls were  happening ,  the grocery hypermarkets seem to be taking a different route. The large format hypermarkets have started getting out of the comforts of the Malls and taking on the competition on the high-streets and neighbourhoods. They call themselves 'express ' ,'easy' etc..