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The smaller festival marketplaces in brilliant interiors, combining shopping facilities with amusements have proven very popular. This theme of providing recreation as well as shopping is changing the thinking of developers and managers.
February 01, 2008 -- Shopping centers and malls have been getting larger. Some of the older ones have been improved by being enclosed. The success of the huge mall/amusement center in West Edmonton, and the center in Bloomington, Minnesota has drawn worldwide attention. The smaller festival marketplaces in brilliant interiors, combining shopping facilities with amusements, have proven very popular. This theme of providing recreation as well as shopping is changing the thinking of developers and managers.
The Superstore
Many shopping centers have been anchored by a supermarket. The newest trend in the supermarket is the superstore. A superstore is defined as a supermarket with 50,000 or more square feet of gross leasable area, with 20% to 25% of sales in nonfood items. Its gross sales should be several times the typical older supermarket.
A recent study showed that the center anchored by a superstore have a better return on investment than centers without a superstore as an anchor tenant. The other tenants in the center do well, provided that they offer goods that are not available at the superstore. The merchants who compete directly with the superstore do less well. For example, hairdressers, dry cleaners, and do well. An example of the quick changes in centers is the failure of many movie rental stores, wiped out by netflix
There may be a question in leasing to a superstore operation. Should the whole store be under a single lease? Should each component (bakery, pharmacy, delicatessen, etc.) be treated separately in the lease?
The Fashion Center
A Fashion Mall would be on the opposite pole from the superstore center. This is defined as a concentration of apparel shops, boutiques, and custom quality shops carrying special merchandise, usually of high quality and with high prices. This concentration has resulted in a higher sales volume by all the individual tenants than such individual stores would achieve in regular regional or super regional malls.
One of the greatest attractions of the fashion mall is the "snob" appeal of the concentration of the custom quality shops. Management of the mall must be extremely careful with this marketing approach. Too much of the "snob" appeal might be too selective, with a possible alienation of customers. An approach that is too broad could lose that appeal and make the center just another shopping center.
Longer Shopping Hours
With both adult members of more families now working outside the home, people have less spare time. They want to shop for what they want at the time when they want it. Retailers in shopping centers are finding that they must keep open longer hours and make shopping as convenient as possible.
Activities Other Than Retail
Larger malls will be providing evening and weekend shoppers with more reasons to come to their centers. In addition to shopping, shoppers will be seeing various cultural attractions, daycare facilities, medical clinics and dentist offices, health clubs and other facilities that were not in malls previously.
Mixed-Use Centers
With the longer hours, the emphasis on service, and more events to draw in adult spenders, there are other changes. No longer are shopping centers or malls just for retailing. Shopping centers have increasingly become mixed-use centers, now incorporating hotels, theaters and office buildings. They are increasingly becoming more like the older downtown sections of communities. |
