FEATURES Remaking the Mall for the Digital Age
A Case Study of the Village of Rochester Hills G. SCOTT AIKENS*
Abstract: This article explores how an investment in a mature social-media platform can help drive business for shopping centers. First, it describes the shopping center as a network-intensive entity amenable to the value provided by the Internet and social-media tools. Second, five steps are spelled out for developing a successful social platform: 1) put the tools in place; 2) focus on back-end analytics; 3) use the mall’s natural advantages to grow; 4) repeatedly focus on serving the mall’s customers; 5) align digital marketing and leasing.
Shopping-center owners, developers, operators,
marketers and leasing agents, as well as even municipal authorities and economic-development managers, should carefully consider how to enhance retail spending by effectively utilizing new Internet and social-media tools. Case in point: The Apple Store. Consumers pack these
stores. One reason for this high popularity must be the Apple team’s facility with computers and digital networks. Specifically, they know how to create fervor in the hearts and minds of Apple’s customers. When one walks into the store and looks at the latest iPad, one also holds in the mind’s eye an iTunes library, a YouTube collection and a Facebook wall. The innovative hardware plus the digital content allows the customer to have a strong emotional link to products. That translates into financial value as well, since the Apple Store’s average sales per square foot is $6,050, according to Retail Sails, a New York-based research and consulting firm.1 It alone makes a mall more productive and increases its value. How, then, can the mall itself create this kind of fervor and harness it to best serve the goals of management?
Networks and Enhanced Fervor for the Mall It is helpful to conceptually segment the mall or retail-
development environment into the most fundamental functions. Retailers sell products and services along with an experience through a variety of channels—in-store, online, catalogs, home television. Say that someone hosting a dinner party needs a new
casserole dish. She can connect, for example, to Williams- Sonoma via an iPad in the kitchen, a desktop at work, a smart-phone in the car, or at a shop across town. The local store is but one channel through which Williams- Sonoma can sell that casserole dish.
In its favor, the land on which the shopping mall is
located hosts a large variety of place-based shopping experiences. The retailer’s brands, through signage and storefronts, point to a variety of products and services. In this way, the land becomes a physical nexus through which retailers deploy their brands to connect consumers in a community with their goods. Williams- Sonoma’s storefront sign at the mall is not much different in function than a hyperlink version of their logo that takes a Web surfer to an e-commerce page displaying their dishes. Likewise, even as Williams-Sonoma has made an
effective hyperlink out of their logo, the mall’s branded logo can become a hyperlink as well. The mall, like the retailer, can participate through this link in digitally fueled social networks created by the mall’s potential community of visitors. The savvy development of a computer- powered social platform can enable the mall to conjure some of the magic of the Apple Store. In this instance, “magic” is defined as the emotional experience the social platform elicits from its community of users, and ultimately supports the business goals of the shopping center.
Building Tomorrow’s Website/Social Platform A social network can engage the public in many ways,
build trust and deepen the emotional investment of a growing public in the brand, and even stimulate the public to participate more actively. The key is to produce these outcomes so as to serve the underlying business drivers of the mall and its retail clients. First of all, a caveat is necessary. The ability of a retail
center to unlock fervor depends on the affection for the place that already exists. The pre-existing level of affection for a place depends on a range of factors, such
* Vice President, Leasing, Robert B. Aikens & Associates, LLC 1 Rik Myslewski, “Apple Retail Stores Most Productive in U.S. – By Far,” The Register (United Kingdom), November 13, 2012, retrieved January 29, 2013.
(The amount is for the year ending in June 2012.) INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF SHOPPING CENTERS 24 1 RETAIL PROPERTY INSIGHTS VOL. 20, NO. 1, 2013
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