Malls – Everyone is visiting them.
Moms shopping, Dads outing or a Kid zone, you say it and they have it!
What is the one thing which makes them so special?
Convenience! Aesthetics! Service! Experience! Infrastructure! People!
Or, all of them or may be just the craze.
Malls are a new concept in Indian retail. Initiated with a Bang (read: the first timers), controversial for the frequent comparisons with the local ‘kirana’ stores and now struggling for better footfalls & conversions.
Honestly, I have been working on certain malls recently, Goodness! What an experience but what a learning indeed…….so much to do for many customers for so many brands under one roof. And this one is just a start for a journey through malls…..
Huh..! Doesn’t even sounds easy and take my words it isn’t an easy job for a marketer, a retail investor or a consultant like me.
Challenges for the Mall Owners/Retailers& all those working with them are –
v Customer Preferences
v Innovative Concepts
v Décor – External/Internal/Theme based/Specific TG oriented.
v Customer Convenience – Anything you organize should not cause any kind of customer traffic jams inside the mall.
v Facility Management – No customer actually tolerates a mall with power cuts, stuck escalators, dirty walls etc. So, that becomes a major challenge again, where your people management skills come into picture too.
v Budget Constraints.
v Timelines- One cannot take up & execute such projects during daytime.
v Infrastructure – You need extraordinary equipments for execution, remember the sizes of these malls!
These and more in the upcoming posts….
Note: Usage of technical jargons is avoided to make it easy to understand for all.
Moms shopping, Dads outing or a Kid zone, you say it and they have it!
What is the one thing which makes them so special?
Convenience! Aesthetics! Service! Experience! Infrastructure! People!
Or, all of them or may be just the craze.
Malls are a new concept in Indian retail. Initiated with a Bang (read: the first timers), controversial for the frequent comparisons with the local ‘kirana’ stores and now struggling for better footfalls & conversions.
Honestly, I have been working on certain malls recently, Goodness! What an experience but what a learning indeed…….so much to do for many customers for so many brands under one roof. And this one is just a start for a journey through malls…..
Huh..! Doesn’t even sounds easy and take my words it isn’t an easy job for a marketer, a retail investor or a consultant like me.
Challenges for the Mall Owners/Retailers& all those working with them are –
v Customer Preferences
v Innovative Concepts
v Décor – External/Internal/Theme based/Specific TG oriented.
v Customer Convenience – Anything you organize should not cause any kind of customer traffic jams inside the mall.
v Facility Management – No customer actually tolerates a mall with power cuts, stuck escalators, dirty walls etc. So, that becomes a major challenge again, where your people management skills come into picture too.
v Budget Constraints.
v Timelines- One cannot take up & execute such projects during daytime.
v Infrastructure – You need extraordinary equipments for execution, remember the sizes of these malls!
These and more in the upcoming posts….
Note: Usage of technical jargons is avoided to make it easy to understand for all.
3 comments:
looking forward to the series ...
With the terrorists strike the security is another major concern in these malls, not to forget the extra care in facilities management especially after the famous Garuda Mall incident in B'lore.
I think so far the biggest challenge remain converting footfalls into sales. Another thing, retail manager needs to take a look is the 'neighbouring stores'. Many malls I visit, I find a luxury store amongst the low price stores. I think the manager there forgets that most of the footfalls will be for those budgetary stores and wont be sales for their stores.
Btw I happened to visit another mall in an office area where the food court is right in the front therefore most of the people dont know that there are shops at the back
@ Shoooonya
You will see one soon...
@ Charu
Hmm...security is ofcourse a concern and we can all see the tight security measures being taken by malls....
Secondly, conversions have always been the major challenge for retail investors....the phenomena you mentioned as neighbouring stores is called 'Zoning' and few recent & many upcoming malls are coming up this concept.....making promotions easy.
And let me know the name of the mall...you have mentioned about..
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