By Brian Boone

Keep these facts in mind when you’re traipsing through the mall trying to get all of your holiday shopping done. But yes, as you might have suspected, malls and big box stores are arranged and marketed to get you to spend money — even if things are on sale.

• Big malls are almost always laid out with shops on exactly two levels. That way, if a shopper walks the length of the building to get to an escalator, then the length of it again on the other level, they’ll have walked past every tantalizing store.

• Parking is placed to encourage shoppers to enter the mall on an upper level. The Theory: People are more likely to travel in a downward fashion to check out stores than they are to move up to a higher level. 

• Open spaces like courtyards or seating areas are built in to a mall’s ground floor for one big reason. It allows shoppers to see stores on both levels from wherever they may be. This idea even extends to the protective barriers to prevent falling from the upper level: They’re made of transparent glass or plastic so as to not obstruct sight lines. 

• Those omnipresent skylights are also installed within deep wells, which prevents sunlight from reflecting off stores’ glass windows. That would cause an unsightly and shopper-repelling glare.

• The interior design of a mall is calculatingly bland. It’s supposed to be just pleasant enough, because developers don’t want to call any attention away from the stores, where people buy things. 

• On to the food court… which is not going to be anywhere near the stores selling top-dollar merchandise, like jewelry. Food smells discourage large purchasing. 

• Your mall probably doesn’t have a grocery store. Malls don’t let them in, because they sell perishable items. Having milk, eggs, or meat in one’s possession makes them want to get home quickly and refrigerate those items, not stick around and see what else there is to buy at the mall.

• Black Friday sales happen at most retail establishments, not just at the mall, and especially at mega-sized “big box” stores. A lot of psychology goes into getting people to hit the stores in the wee hours on what would otherwise be their day off, and the first day of a long holiday shopping season. By offering seemingly deep discounts on merchandise, stores make customers think about scarcity and fear of missing out. 

• Stores also encourage Black Friday shopping as a form of community engagement. By implying or explicitly stating that it’s their biggest or busiest shopping day of the year, they’re subtly suggesting that social participation is mandatory or at least interesting. (For what it’s worth, Black Friday isn’t the biggest shopping day of the year: Stores do their most business on the last Saturday before Christmas — because of all the people who ignored the Black Friday sales frenzy and waited until the last minute to do their shopping.)