Explaining the Effective Components in the Family Shopping Experience and the Architecture of Family-Friendly Commercial Complexes

The family is the most fundamental social unit. Paying attention to the family and the needs of its members, especially the need for leisure, is a manifestation of Iranian and Islamic culture that nurtures healthy people for future generations. Today, commercial complexes are the manifestation of cultural and behavioral changes in the field of consumption and leisure. By accepting social, cultural and recreational functions in addition to economic functions, commercial complexes have been transformed into spaces with mixed and diverse uses and are competing with each other to try to accommodate various groups of society such as women and youth and are suitable for all family members. Therefore, paying attention to a type of leisure for families that is specific to urban and modern life, i.e., visiting and using the facilities gathered in commercial complexes and researching the components of the architecture of family-friendly commercial complexes is the main purpose of this research. The method adopted in this research is Grounded theory with a systematic approach of Strauss and Corbin. The data were obtained through semi-structured interviews with 57 visitors of some selected commercial complexes and analysis behavioral patterns of users of these centers in the areas of shopping, entertainment and leisure. The findings of this study are classified in the form of categories obtained from the analysis of interviews, in 6 main areas: Causal conditions, Context, Core category, Intervening conditions, Strategies and Consequences. The results of this study show that by choosing the family shopping experience as a core category, the consequences of the family shopping experience in both the family and the commercial complex in the context of Tehran can be achieved. Also, effective components in the architecture of family-friendly commercial complexes are other results of the present study, which are mostly in the field of causal conditions and prerequisites for the family shopping experience.