ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 served to indicate some of the critical linkages existing between the rise of the multiplex, ongoing structural change in the leisure industries and the emerging focus of economic planning in India. Extending this discussion throughout the course of this chapter, we describe how the multiplex industry intersects with the contemporaneous phenomenon of organised retail and the attempts being made by its proponents to re-write India’s commercial culture. In turn, both the multiplex and its host body, the shopping mall, must be further considered in light of their intrinsic relationship to the shifting regulatory frameworks governing the management of urban lands and an exuberant property market in India’s major cities. The volatile economic conditions within these particular contexts exert important effects upon the strategic planning of the multiplex operators. At one level, the shopping mall craze has been a growth driver for the multiplexes, but at the same time the rising cost of lands and the issues raised by a rapidly overheating market both raise questions over the long-term viability of the mall-multiplex combine. The spiralling costs in their most favoured markets and the oversaturation of previously successful catchments by copycat developers are providing the impetus for ambitious expansion plans to take the multiplex to India’s second-tier cities. In effect, this entails shifting the terrain of commercial competition between multiplex operators to the national level.
