I sat near the Macy's on the second floor of the Northlake mall, moving around occasionally, for around 2 hours, just paying attention to how stores compete with one another, and how people spend their money in the various stores. Stores that are specialty-type shops with little to no competition were often rather filled with people. A good example of this is Sweet Spot, a candy shop. The store itself is small, but it is the only specialty candy store in the Northlake mall, and people like candy. I watched as people walked out with large bags full of candy, snacking on it as they went about their business. The same was true for a nearby Starbucks, the only coffee shop in the mall, which was rather busy. People would walk in, purchase an expensive coffee, and then continue to walk around the mall. The people who were travelling in groups of 4 or more would sit down at a table and talk for a while, the people who were alone would sit down with a laptop, cellphone, or tablet in hand, and the people in-between would walk out almost as quickly as they'd walked in, as though they were on a mission. I also walked around and looked at some of the attempts at competition between the stores. I noticed that the stores that had more nearby competition were often clothing stores, and all of them would have racks proclaiming “Clearance!” that would be nearly empty. The stores themselves would have few people inside shopping around, while the stores like Starbucks and Sweet Spot just had signs out front telling the special deal for the day and had a steady stream of customers. It seems people like a deal, and they like to shop for a deal. It also seems that businesses have a hard time thriving in a small, packed-together spacing area, such as a mall, unless there is little to no competition around.