Geographical Location-Shophouses

Geographical location - Shophouses

After discussing about the various locations of Mustafa Centre on the geographical map, we will now unpack more of its significance in the affecting the development of the area that it was built on.

A lot of the shop houses are restaurants as those who came to Mustafa for shopping will often go to the shop houses to have lunch or dinner

said Miss Jeet, a Mustafa employee

The building of Mustafa had brought about a significance in the entire area it was built on. Mustafa has generated such a large crowd that many business has taken the opportunity to set up their shops around the area to share the human traffic that Mustafa brings about. Many restaurants have opened up to cater to the customers and old restaurants that were there even before Mustafa was opened had converted to be 24 hours to attend to Mustafa’s constant customers.

This expansion may be a way to beat off competition too, to prevent someone else from duplicating what they offer.

said Dr Lwin,NUS Business School's Assistant Professor (Ng, Mustafa gives up hotel, 2004)

As mentioned before, Mustafa Centre expanded to a total of 280,000 sq feet in 2014. Thus, Mustafa Centre is the dominant department store around the area. Despite the many restaurants that have opened up in the vicinity of Mustafa Centre, we are still able to notice a number of mini grocery marts or shops selling electronics around it. However, we observed that it is not as packed as it is at Mustafa Centre.

This is critical as there is already a wide variety of goods and services available in Mustafa Centre yet the small shops in the area are to able to survive the competition brought about by Mustafa Centre. This shows that despite being a mega store that sells more than what the small businesses could offer, Mustafa’s existence has a brought about significance as in its own ways, it was able to support these small shops such that it continues to thrive over the years. This is probably due to the fact that, Mustafa provides them a steady stream of customers as well as having their own loyal customers.

Additionally, restaurants around the area mainly sold Indian cuisine because Indians make up a large percentage of the customer demographics of the area. Most of the customers we interviewed said that other than visiting Mustafa Centre, they will patronise the restaurants nearby and tourists from India even stay in the hotels that have opened nearby Mustafa Centre.

This proves how the land that it was built on has gained its significance in the development of the entire area as in the past, Syed Alwi Road was just an area off the central of Little India, generating very little human traffic as compared to what it is today all thanks to Mustafa Centre.