The Mustafa Experience
Our visits to Mustafa never got old. This may come as no surprise to those familiar with the mall, but even equipped with the online interactive floor plan, we somehow still managed to lose our way. Captain Saiyed, a frequent visitor from India, best puts our feelings into words, “I am always confused”. Though it is hardly the only reason why, the display of items contributes to the chaos of Mustafa; the lack of logic in product display is mirrored in the disarray throughout the mall (Accioly, 2009, p. 211). For instance, it seems instinctively odd that the artificial flower stand department is located across the level from the art & flower department – yet this is the reality you will see at Mustafa.
There are times we want to just grab-and-go, but Mustafa robs us of that. Mustafa almost seemed like an ordinary mall to us, with countless tiny store signage, sans a directory. The difficulty to navigate around Mustafa serves as a roadblock – a thorough walk-through exposes one’s senses to its wide range of products, and eventually leads to unconscious buying (Klosowski, 2013). Ms Westen, a resident from Spain, promptly replies “for sure” to confirm the tendency of excessive purchase in her three visits to Mustafa. Simply put in the wise words of Saiyed, “[S]hopping at Mustafa is not simply window shopping, it’s real shopping.”
The Chaos of Mustafa
Despite his bafflement about staff personnel,
Mr Saiyed remains a regular customer of Mustafa, as do we. Our repeated visits, however, proved to be no different than the first – if there was one thing our visit to Mustafa taught us, it was this: that one cannot expect to ever be familiar with Mustafa’s layout.
Artificial flower stand
think grab-and-go? try again
I also cannot tell whether
a person is a staff or [a] customer.
Mr Saiyed, Customer
