The document describes 6 different locations: 1) A bright colored cafe situated near a lift in Marina Bay Sands, with music playing and customers enjoying time with tea. 2) A basement area in Takashimayah shopping mall set up like a warehouse for customers to directly browse and purchase clearance items without assistance. 3) A dining area along the Singapore River popular with tourists selling seafood but described as overpriced. 4) An open area in Takashimayah hosting a road show with sales assistants from different phone companies promoting their products. 5) A new beauty makeup store in Ion Orchard observed and compared to other leading brands in the area.

1. Unveiling, “What was
that?”
It’s so normal, we forget there’s more than meet
the eyes.
Vivian E Williams
10/30/2012
Looking beyond the surface of things and see what goes behind the scenes … Uniquely Singapore.

2. Location: Marina Bay
Sands
A space different from the rest.
For the first location, the focus will be on the right which is a café. At first sight, one can
see the café’s surrounded by water. Situated near the lift, customers can easily drop by.
I was attracted by the bright colours especially red sofa seats which were vibrant. It
doesn’t have a physical door but uses a different concept which customers enter
through crossing a bridge to enter to the café which acts as a “door”. There’s some music
playing at the background, tracks from Broadway plays such as Phantom of the Opera or
evergreen singers - Andy Williams. Even the choice of songs reflects the status of
customers as they will better appreciate quiet songs. Many of the customers stayed for a
white, apart from enjoying quality time with the tea and their companion. There were
some shoppers who dropped by for tea, apart from the working adults who patronised
this cafe for meetings with clients. All the servers in this café wore an uniform and
looked like they were early adults or late teens. They greeted each customer with a
smile and similar greetings to their customers.

3. Location: Takashimayah B2
A place to gather and pick.
For the second location, it was situated at the basement of the shopping mall, due to the
large open space situated in the middle. Many customers are able to come in. The
cashiers are situated in the corners and there are no sales assistants to assist you.
Hence, this allowed the customers to explore the items without any hassle. Yet the
downside is if you require assistance, it will be quite a challenge. I won’t be interested in
sales as usually it’s messy and not worth the price. However, this open concept of letting
the customers to pick, choose and buy are usually are often used for clearance items.
Many customers strolled in, some purchased and others just looked around. There were
no music played at this space, as the voices of the shoppers and music from other shops
created a musical effect.

4. Location: Boat Quay
A place to dine by the river
For the third location, the diners will be greeted by the openness of Singapore
River. The shop mostly sold seafood with the crabs placed in a huge tank. The
diners were usually tourists. There were many office workers who finished their
work and seek a place to chill with fellow colleagues. It created a mixed feeling of
place with pubs at one area and dining which followed next. I won’t dine at this
place as it’s classified as a touristy area with day light robbery prices.

5. Location: Takashimayah B2
A road show event
For the fourth location, chose another open concept where the items are placed
in the middle. An interesting choice of location, as to the left are people who
were resting with their family, shoppers who were resting from their trips and
even office workers who were sitting by the fountain with their meals. However,
there was not much response from sales assistant were divided to two sections;
blue which represents the phone company and another one, their uniform were
similar to their phone subscriber company’s colour – Red.

6. Location: Ion Orchard
A place for your beauty needs (One of a kind)
For the fifth location, chose to observe a newly opened beauty makeup shop
which opened here. It’s a one of a kind which has opened the doors here. There
are only 2 beauty advisors here and have similar uniform worn to their company
– Black. As this area has many other beauty makeup brands such as Bobbi
Brown, Channel, ShuUmera which are also leading brands. Hence, it’s interesting
to observe how customers choose to go into which beauty stores and the next
picture will introduce another store nearby.
Location: Ion Orchard

7. A space for all your beauty need (One of a kind)
For the sixth location, decided to observe this shop as it was used to compare to
the previous shop (Pictures on page 6 – YSL beauty makeup store). Hence, one
could see the heavily usage of logos in the store to represent the brand image.
The stores gave a clean feeling to the customer with colours are much darker
shades compared to the previous pictures. Also one can observe everything are
neatly place that keep the customer’s attention on various shades and carter to
makeup needs.