Japan’s 1964 liberalization of outbound travel marked the emergence of an intra-Asian economy of mass consumption as a new population of middle class travelers began to participate in international travel as consumers with unprecedented disposable income. This regional transformation in mobility and consumption laid the groundwork for later expansions in retail development in Asia. My lens of analysis will center on the triangulation of co-creation between the nation-state, corporations, and consumers by tracing the circular pathways of business strategy and economic/cultural capital amongst these three actors, as materialized in but also across three pivotal sites: Tokyo, Honolulu, and Singapore.
In particular, this paper will analyze the Singapore Changi airport as a case study of contemporary tourist destination of shopping and spectacle by narrating the history of its strategic construction in 1981. By analyzing archival government and planning documents from the Singapore Tourism Promotion Board, I will demonstrate the pivotal role of retail development in the Singaporean government’s airport infrastructure investment strategy to boost tourism and build Singapore’s national identity as a technocratic modern urban utopia. I will also examine the corporate development strategies of Changi Airport Group and Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) that emerged from state co-creation and how both the political and economic strategies constructed consumer logics, but also how consumers began to dictate and influence corporate market expansion. By examining the airport as a materialization of these private-public dynamics, I situate this case study within the broader argument that the emergence of the contemporary intra-Asian and broader transnational tourist economy cannot be understood without the fine-grained understanding of how retail development strategies were both exchanged and adapted by international states and corporations.