I don't know, I've always interpreted greed as being the killer in this film.
The whole underlined plot was poking at consumerism, how people walk around malls aimlessly like zombies and just go in and buy things they don't need. Spending, spending and spending, until they have nothing or no more arm room to carry their shopping bags.
It just always seemed it wasn't because the place was familiar that they stayed, it certainly wasn't safe with the zombies outside because eventually they had to know they would get in or the supplies would run low.
Fran often said they needed to get out, I believe there's a line in the film something along the lines of "It's so bright and colorful, and wrapped up with a nice bow you can't see it's a prison too" or something to that effect. Stephen isn't staying for the sense of normalcy, he's staying because of the things in the mall, the things they have. His only reasoning to stay when he talks to Fran is all the great stuff they had found in the mall.
Completely obliterate to the fact that Fran is scared out of her whits, his means of calming her is by blinding her with pretty things - not reassuring her she's safe and that the danger is gone.
I know people interpret things in their own way, which is one of the reasons I love message boards since you can see different interpretations and ideas from others. It's a good point to believe they stayed merely because it was "familiar" to them but from my perspective, they stayed because they wanted to.
We don't know how bad things were in the world at that point, obviously not as bad as we think with a gang of renegade bikers running a muck - so there is a good chance the group could have loaded up on supplies and found refuge with other people in a safer installation. Or there's a chance they could not have found anything.
But the fact of the matter is, the mall was not a safe place. Regardless of the biker's presence or not, the doors were made out of glass and despite that it's safety glass - it wouldn't stop the doors from eventually giving way or the zombies to find tools to smash the windows in.
That's just my interpretation of course. The group was driven by greed in a lot of ways and it's easy to understand how it would have happened. Surrounded by everything you could think you need - it would happen to even the most giving person, suddenly things would be "yours" and not "ours". I think it's now part of the human psyche to constantly want more, something better.
I mean look at us, ravaging horror fans begging for now Blu Ray releases of many films when there's nothing wrong with the DVD copies we possess now. They work fine, still play and look pretty damn good on our flat screen TVs. But we still want more - we want something better because we know we can get better. It's not greed to the fullest extent, but it is greedy to have that constant want, to not be content with what we have, to always want more.
I'm no saint, I know I'm going to buy the films that I have on DVD when they come out on Blu Ray - even if it's not much of an upgrade, it's still an upgrade from what I have and that's what makes it so enticing. The upgrade of getting something better. Something that is going to blow whatever I had seen or heard away but the content itself isn't changing, but I'll still buy it.
Even with new films, buying a Blu Ray or a DVD can be greedy in the sense that we complain about things missing. We're so accustomed to packed discs that a DVD with a trailer and a commentary isn't good enough anymore when at one point, it's all we had. Hell there was a time when we didn't have that, we had VHS! But yet we still spent the money, we still craved more, and we keep getting it...over and over again.
Anyways, sorry about the rant, I can get so carried away some times.
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