PREFACE

A site is just like a stage, which bears the development of the plot even though it can never be a role in any drama. However, actors get identities here while items gain significance, without stage, drama might be meaningless. So is shopping, it is not just a satisfaction on aesthetic needs and usage requirements, but more than stimulating personal desire to buy; it is more like a symbol of social identity and status.

Seemingly simple but actually complicate, consumption activity could be deepened a bit further. Even buying a same item, the significance of this item and the social status are much different in different sites. Each site has an accurate social identity with certain consumers, so the goods selling helps to deepen the self-reorganization and social identity. This is the key function of modern consumption market.

In that case, shopping sites are not pedlar's markets, but a certain place needs some kind of atmosphere to attract and appeal the consumers. In this site, consumers could find goods they need and feel the atmosphere to fit them, to handle their social status and search for social groups just like themselves. Entering this site, a consumer can explore or play his own role, and interpret a drama of certain stage of his life with others. This makes the site be more than a shopping site, but a site to create and exchange roles in the society instead.

Such a site is required to be high-end and gorgeous, and also aesthetic—being different from the flashy marketplace. A real atmosphere with a strong sense of aesthetics is called for, to be an accumulation of culture and key context for consumers to identify their identification. As a result, designs for those sites must be real designs instead of sticking to combination of luxury materials and inertia of thinking.

This book takes shopping sites as the theme, which fits modern consumption culture. What is more important, design for shopping sites must develop rapidly with the development of economy growth in our country. That is why we need to work hard and promote our design skills, to meet the need of overall industrial transformation in China.