online – Something to Ponder About

While Scandinavia observes the time-honoured rituals and traditions of Advent and selecting a live fir tree, Australian shoppers prepare for their Christmas experience by visiting Westfield shopping centres and erecting plastic Christmas trees.

Perhaps you call them malls or something else, but these concrete Westfield centres pay homage to Western greed and indulgence. They are places where every possible gift or want could be exchanged for money. But visiting these venues at Christmas is not just about purchasing gifts, it is also an endurance experience.

It is cut-throat and dog-eat-dog – believe me.

For instance, it is not uncommon to experience a minor verbal brawl over the last free car parking space at Westfield at Christmastime.

Once the Christmas shopping is complete, arms laden with bags brimming with gifts, Aussie consumers dodge and weave the line-up of vehicles circumnavigating the Westfield car parks, like participants in the old video game: ‘frogger.’

Woe betide any shopper arriving late to the shopping party (i.e. after 10 in the morning) as this automatically marshals you into a ‘hunt.’ To snag a spare car park after 10 am at Westfield is like winning the lottery. Any human carrying shopping bags in the car park precinct is stalked and followed in the desperate hope the ‘prey’ will vacate their car park and not just offload their gift cache and return to the shops for a second ‘run’ through the Christmas crowds.

Every man must fend for himself in this retail frenzy.

Thinking Outside the Box

I know of one homeowner who capitalised on Xmas, finding a silver lining in the chaos. Compensating for the proximity of his home to a Westfield shopping centre, he made a small fortune in tax-free cash, renting out his yard as an impromptu car park to desperate shoppers in the days leading up to and after Xmas.

Good on him. There has to be some compensation for tolerating the bastion of consumerism at your back door.

However, Westfield’s days seem to be limited – the pandemic has changed the consumer landscape forever.

Shopping online, or choosing to ‘click and collect’, saves most consumers time and stress. Modern youth embraces it – despite issues with delivery (tell me about it) and the fact that buying online produces more fossil fuels in transport and the manufacture of the necessary plastic packaging. This includes black plastic packaging, which can’t be recycled at all due to carbon black pigments.

So, I ask: what is the future for the behemoths of consumerism and the acres of asphalt that constitute the car parks?

Will the ‘Christmas Shopping phenomenon, the ruthless haggling over car park spots, and the bustling Westfield Xmas chaos relegate the concrete monoliths to a slow decay, unwanted and unable to adapt?

Is there still a place for the in-store shopping experience?

What do you think?

When the internet came along, it was suggested that everything would be done online, from shopping to employment and communications. Individuals would not need to leave home to live their consumer lives.

The public however, has shown that we are primarily social creatures and are reluctant to embrace a completely virtual lifestyle. Whilst online shopping has undoubtedly increased, it wasn’t the tidal wave envisaged by the tech industry, until Covid 19 came along.

Our lives have become more virtual, whether we liked it, or not.

Getting takeout or takeaway doesn’t seem to give us the same experience as dining in at a restaurant or cafe. Neither does the online shopping experience feel quite as satisfying as the benefits of browsing in person at a store, feeling the fabric in a garment, physically trying on clothing, or chatting to another shopper, seeing what is around.

Because it is not just the objective alone, that is important.

It’s the whole consumer experience.

The atmosphere at the cafes and shops is attractive to us through our senses: the watching of people; the smells, sights and sounds; (overwhelming for some), or the conversation with friends you meet whilst shopping; the interaction with Cafe staff and fellow diners; the inspirational decor on the walls, or from the books on the shelves in a bookstore; even the art on the walls.

All of this, together, gives us a pleasurable sensory experience that is clearly important to us, as a comment on my second blog alluded.

“We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.”
Dalai Lama

Benefits of Covid and Virtual Lifestyle

During the Covid lockdown, skies, streets and air appears cleaner and we have more time on our hands. None of that horrid sitting stuck in traffic on the way home from work, or rushing to catch a crowded train with a million other commuters at 5pm.

Other people discover there is time to get to know their kids, becoming involved, by choice or necessity, in their education, or generally engaging with them more because there is little ecternal events to absorb their time. (Albeit for some, this could be far more stressful and family life might suffer from a lack of outside exposure, stimulation or influence).

All wonderful benefits of an enforced, semi-virtual life.

Yet, it seems even introverts or socially phobic individuals have struggled with being cooped up during the Covid pandemic.

We, as humans, seem to value social interaction above any virtual experience.

Cafe Society Lifestyle

Prior to the appearance of Covid, the Cafe society was a popular lifestyle choice in Australia. When cafes closed down in lock-down, no one knew what would happen. Aussie Cafes/Diners and Restaurants were legally allowed to operate only on a takeaway, (takeout), basis.

Many chose to close, temporarily, or permanently and the alfresco cafe dining experience came to an abrupt end.

The Beach Esplanade, near my home, is lined with popular cafes and restaurants of all persuasions and cuisines. Being smaller businesses, most have closed completely, but some remain open. Last night, I placed a phone order for a ‘Quarantine Pack’, at one of the restaurants. Being a Friday night, I wondered what I’d find when I arrived for the meal.

At the Italian restaurant itself, a makeshift pick-up counter was laid out with social distancing markers in the formerly packed out al fresco dining area. Customers awaited their order in silence, or hushed in conversations with their partner, spaced well apart from each other. This was a very different picture to the regular Friday night.

On the opposite side of the road, overlooking the sea, couples and small family groups sat on benches or rugs, at the required social distance, eating their takeaway meals and watching the moonlight filtering over the waves, lapping the shore.