6: Big Store Design and Marketing Effects: Non-Western, New-Build Shopping Malls and Implications for the Re-Enchantment of Consumption

The focus of this chapter is the nature of shopping mall design, specifically as it is developing in non-western countries, where it can be seen as part of the global process of the re-enchantment of consumption. Questions raised concern how that mall re-enchantment may differ from western models and how it may be related to the discourses of political legitimacy and national identity currently circulating in many non-western societies. The implications this holds for our understanding of the process of retail re-enchantment overall are also discussed. The chapter, which is conceptual rather than empirical, is structured as follows: after a review of the re-enchantment literature, an analysis of the Khan Shatyr complex in Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan, is undertaken in the case study, before a concluding section which contains implications for our understanding of the re-enchantment of consumption in geo-political terms. Not only does the case study feature a particularly striking example of contemporary shopping mall design, it also highlights many of the gaps in the previous mall design academic literature(s).