Five themes for the successful shopping mall management
At HyperIn our mission is to offer the leading retail real estate management platform for connecting digital and physical consumer journey. We truly believe that shopping destinations will also in future be lively places for consumers to visit and get inspired. However, this requires that landlords will be able to deliver all these experiences in a convenient way like in 2020 is expected.
To better meet the current and future customer expectations, the shopping mall
management needs to keep improving several fields in their business. At HyperIn we do our best in understanding these fields and helping the landlords to succeed better in those areas. In the following we will go through five themes in shopping mall management we believe to be very meaningful for a successful post-COVID era.
Commercial management
Efficient processes in the mall management are the whole core for being able to compete with eCommerce. Smooth daily workflows give freedom in the capacity to serve better the tenants and consumers, while leaving space for creativity. The management team needs to understand the commercial performance of the mall in
ever shorter frequency. Reporting of the sales used to be enough on a monthly basis but nowadays the need is daily level in many centers. The basic figures are not enough anymore. Data needs to be viewed, extracted and enriched more easily. This also means that different solutions have to seamlessly communicate with each other in the same ecosystem.
With media sales tools, mall operators can monetise empty retail spaces. Especially the specialty leasing promotional places and pop up shops are an efficient way to generate new recurring revenue streams. Even 10% growth can be achieved in annual retail real estate revenues with on-line bookings derived from non-rental sources, like paid advertisements and campaigns.
Within the past years machine learning has started to increasingly help in various
decisions. For example in the analysis and future projections of the shopping mall
performance, artificial intelligence can offer further benefits for management to take corrective actions accordingly and find the right solutions forward.
Tenant Engagement
Close co-operation between the mall management and tenants has been underlined during the past months. Both parties have to be on the same side of the table when planning the coming actions.
Mall management communicates in multiple channels simultaneously towards the tenants and consumers. Tenants need to be engaged to contribute for the different activities planned by the mall management. One part of the successful cooperation is the capability to analyse and learn from the results together with the tenants.
Safety and Crisis
This year has shown us very clearly that to maintain the trust amongst the visitors, the management needs to communicate safety issues in a clear and the fastest possible way. When the mall employees and visitors understand the recommended guidelines, the experience for everyone will turn out to be more positive.
Sometimes a large community of people can face unexpected situations and the
management needs to be able to react. Quick and easy internal communication tools are the cornerstone of everything and not forgetting the integrations to external stakeholders, such as authorities.
Experience management
Hyper-local environments offer a unique mix of products and services as “lifestyle
destinations” and “meeting places”. To deliver these experiences, the management has to plan and organise various events and campaigns together with their tenants. Successful preparation can involve keeping hundreds of mall employees up-to-date on what is coming. And successful execution involves communication in multiple consumer channels to reach the right target audience and eventually convert their interest to a sale during their visit in the organised event.
Consumer Engagement
Future retail real estate visitors expect to have a seamless experience between digital and physical consumer journey. Customers appreciate that campaigns are tailored according to their needs and the information is available in multiple channels both in the physical location and on-line.
Multi-channel communication offers options for wider reach, but when competing with eCommerce, the reach needs to be rather smart interaction with the customer. Targeted messages at the right time are something that customers appreciate as an integral part of the journey. The experience can be further enriched with new augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications. Eventually the same means of learning algorithms that are used in eCommerce will support a great customer experience in physical retail destinations.
Building successful future for the shopping malls
At HyperIn we’ve been working for over a decade building an ecosystem for our customers, the operators of the shopping malls in order for them to succeed in these areas. From the very beginning our vision has been in helping the consumers in hyper-local retail environments. Now more than ever, this is driving us forward for the success of our customers and the industry.