CANNES, France, March 17 (Reuters) – As more shoppers migrate 밤알바 직업소개소 online, European mall owners are trying to attract customers by including services not available on the internet, such as health services and public offices. Malls need to be re-imagined more like comprehensive community centers in order to survive against the growing number of failed retailers such as HMV and Blockbuster, real estate experts told Reuters at the annual property fair MIPIM in Cannes, France.
The growing volumes of online transactions will make retailers reevaluate their chain of brick-and-mortar stores, and how the physical locations best support customer experiences. To keep pace, existing retailers will have to build omnichannel strategies – and accelerate their rate of change. To adjust to customers new behaviors and preferences, retailers will need to assess their current omnichannel offerings and look for opportunities for innovation and to close gaps.
With a growing number of customers now engaging via mobile devices, retailers must make sure that all digital channels are integrated and provide a cohesive experience (such as checkout options) and services (such as shopping carts updated in real-time across devices). Retailers will need to dedicate resources in this pursuit of customer-path innovations. Reopening stores will also provide retailers with the opportunity to radically alter the way they do basic processes, as well as implement best practices.
Retailers must also move away from store setting thinking, because this is no longer simply a sales venue, but one that builds affinity and loyalty. While e-tailers provide convenience for shoppers, tenants and malls with an offline presence have a competitive advantage in having a physical space to gather people together, whether it is social activities (a place where people can gather with friends and family) or experiential activities (a place where they can learn something new).
Easton Town Center outside of Columbus, Ohio, for instance, includes 300 shops, located in a mixture of enclosed shopping centers and open-air, car-free street grids. Downmarket tenants can include dollar stores, used-book stores, furniture consignment shops, and charity stores that sell recycled goods. Its tenants impose costs that go beyond the building, but your brand plans may affect the way the shopping center is built.
Mall owners can be put in the position of wanting to close, but a particular tenant wants their doors open. A mall owner may want to stay open, but several of its store owners decided to shut down. As noted above, the tenant can also take over and lease to a third party, so long as a bankruptcy court identifies an appropriate security interest is demonstrated, leaving the mall owner with a new tenant who could pose problems for either the malls landlord or neighboring tenants in the mall.
While this specific case is a bit different, it is not the first time a property owner has attempted to convert into a retailer. Some of those deals will work out, some might not, but the fact is, property owners have become players, not just owners, in this business. Real estate owners have been allowed to hold on to those stores as tenants, paying rent – to themselves, mind you – instead of amassing even more empty storefronts on their properties.
In the 1990s, Canadian property owner Robert Campeau got in on this action, first buying the Federated department stores, and later McDonalds. Mass-produced cars came along 50 years later, and before long, strip malls lined with specialist retailers were peppering newly formed suburbs and challenging city-based department stores.
Very few shopping malls became engines for intelligent development, where people worked, learned, and lived on top of shopping. The growth in online shopping and the impact of the Great Recession led to declining sales and foot traffic for big-brand retailers such as JCPenney and Macys, which anchored many of the nations shopping centers. Between 2010-13, shopping mall visits fell by 50% in the holiday season, the busiest time of the year for shopping.
The establishment of malls like this has contributed to the retail sales increase in Chinese malls by 7.7 percent, according to data from Chinas Commerce Ministry. While brick-and-mortar stores are crucial for customer experiences, our analysis suggests the U.S. has greater mall-based shopping power compared with other countries with large retail markets.
Traditional retailers also are not leading the way with digital innovations across other channels, like mobile shopping and call centers, nor are they integrating digital innovations across other channels seamlessly into their most critical channels–physical stores. With fewer services that can differentiate the store, customers are focusing more and more on price and convenience, strengthening online retailers advantages.
As customers become more comfortable shopping across multiple channels, they become less forgiving about what they experience in stores. By using deeper data analytics, mall owners and tenants are able to uncover patterns and trends in their customers, thus equipping them with insights that then allow them to better meet the needs and wants of their customers, ensuring that they come back for more. As the digital world has trained consumers to expect instant gratification for whatever they desire, and social media has changed how many consume media and information, it is critical that mall owners and retailers alike are there for their consumers, saying the right things at the right times.
On the downside, for the mall operators, is the potential for this simply to become a poor investment, buying struggling retailers that, regardless of who owns them, have no location or strategies to succeed. Whether this strategy works, or if yet another mall operator will join the ranks of failed retailers exiting the real estate industry, remains to be seen. To transform what is in, mall owners will have to borrow ideas from developed markets such as Dubai and China, Roberts said, where centers are part of larger mixed-use developments in which people live, or incorporate outdoor spaces in which they spend their time.