The shopscapes: a tool and a methodology to better grasp kid’s experiences of retailing

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of "shopscapes" the authors define as the imaginary geography each person or group of people builds based on his daily experiences and practices in reference to retail environments and activities and to apply it to children. The authors develop an original and child-centred methodology, by combining drawings and interviews and the authors focus the approach, not on the final drawings but on the drawing activity per se where children work in pairs and collaborate. The authors demonstrate the validity of the approach by proposing that a drawing can only be validly interpreted through the content of an open verbal exchange with its author/s. The activity of drawing, and of mapping when "shopscapes" are questioned, is interestingly richer and more fruitful than just the final result. The originality of the work lies in the concept of shopscapes and in the methodology used in order to reveal them. The authors intend to reveal the nature and range of children's "shopscapes" with the objective of providing reliable information about on how children perceive the retailing experience.