Difference Between Mall and Department Store
The mall and the department store are different in many ways. A store is a retail shop specializing in meeting the needs of their local customers with respect to personal and domestic requirements.
A mall is a much larger establishment. It consists of a huge complex of one or more buildings with various shops inside it. The different shops sell various goods all in one place. This is the specialty of a mall. We can say that a mall can accommodate many department stores. The opposite does not hold.
It is quite natural that in a mall, the different units or segments are properly interconnected. This makes it easy for the shoppers to move from one to the other and adds to their shopping experience. This kind of facility is not seen in a departmental store. This is because a store is primarily a single smaller building that only houses household goods.
Different countries have different names for their malls. They are sometimes called shopping complexes, shopping centers or town centers. Department stores are the same everywhere.
The department stores usually sell products such as clothing, appliances, electronics, furniture and many other products such as cosmetics, toys, fashion jewelry and many other such items. It may be an individual store or part of a larger retail chain. If it is part of a chain, then the same department store will have branches in different parts of the city, country and even in other countries.
A mall is not part of a retail chain. There can be different malls in different places, each functioning as separate units. In fact, a mall is a collection of shops that sell everything that a person can possibly imagine.