Hybrid Consumer Era: The Importance of Connectivity

The late-pandemic footfall recovery observed at malls is being interrupted, primarily due to high gas prices and inflation-related changes that directly affect consumers purchasing behaviour. On top of that, malls are witnessing a sales decline as shoppers switch from brick-and-mortar to clicks. This raises the question of how quickly malls should adapt to consumers and their new hybrid spending habits while building strong consumer relationships.

The answer should be easy, with enhanced Connectivity. But how can it be improved if most malls already have a website and a mobile loyalty app? In this post, we will outline a few alternatives to help shopping malls increase the Connectivity between them, the tenants, and consumers.

Having a Robust Management Platform

One of the key changes that came with the Covid-19 pandemic is how quickly businesses shifted their approach toward e-Commerce. It helped them stay afloat in these challenging times, even allowing them to stay in touch with their target audience. This case is not different for shopping malls that need to rethink their strategy.

Malls would have to incorporate new trends and use relevant systems that will help them improve Connectivity not only with consumers but also with their tenants. Various digital platforms allow shopping malls to become hybrid providers, as shoppers rely mostly on eCommerce to get what they need, which in return, makes the shopping malls loose the real connection within them.

Therefore, it is more than vital to have the right mall management platform that can provide immersive experiences in physical locations that are similar to when they shop online.

Furthermore, the right platform will allow consumers to get a mall-wide shopping experience since they can get all their brands in one place. The AR way-finding is an innovative approach that lets hybrid consumers experience digitized shopping, the first stage of metaverse shopping. However, this is still in the making, so to speak.

Jean Carlos Delgado, Marketing and Brand Director at HyperIn, said, "The future of shopping centers depends on a direct interaction with consumers."

Augmented Reality (AR) way finding helps create real-life experiences using digital information connected through a digital device in real-time. Users can find their way across complexly built environments through immersive customer experiences.

For example, hybrid consumers visiting a digital shopping mall can use the AR finding technique to locate their favourite outlets, products, and brands. And finally also buy and reserve products and services similarly. It is a more creative approach than conventional digital shopping.

Challenging the Way Shopping Malls Operate

While we saw a drop in the overall footfall for many malls during the pandemic, many are now experiencing rapid growth again. Most shopping malls throughout the US saw foot traffic that exceeded the pre-pandemic levels.

In fact, many shopping malls saw a surge in traffic as high as 300% by the end of 2021.

This percentage is a stark contrast to the retail industry, which, previous to that, experienced a massive decline in visitors. However, malls need to understand these changes in consumer behaviour before jumping straight to e-commerce. It can be the case that If products and services are not sold on the location, then they are not sold online either, where the competition is much more complex.

While consumers and tenants have already embarked on the digital transformation, malls will still need to catch the boat that will keep them floating. So, for shopping malls to succeed in the long run, a focus on building consumer relationships must be prioritised seriously.

To connect with hybrid consumers, shopping malls need to rethink their purpose. And that is where services like HyperIn come into play, which ensures that shopping malls engage efficiently with consumers by creating a more deliberate and direct relationship with them.

HyperIn Connect for Better Connectivity

Transforming retail real estate into an online marketplace has its fair share of challenges. Therefore, you need the experience of partners like HyperIn to assist you with your project.

HyperIn Connect streamlines your commercial real estate management with a robust platform. Most importantly, it can help increase customers' value.

The customer lifetime value (CLV) is an essential metric to measure the amount of money the consumer will spend on a business's goods and services throughout their relationship. Let's go over some other benefits that you can enjoy with HyperIn Connect..

• Content Management: The integrated Content Management System (CMS) allows you to post relevant content on various channels. It lets the tenant add or change the content on their websites, apps, and digital signage.
• Mobile Loyalty Application: You can create your loyalty app to reward your shoppers or offer personnel cards to the tenants. The mobile loyalty program allows you to give your consumers QR codes, coupons, and various promotional offers..
• Websites: Create a robust shopping mall website with the best UX design. You can also create digital campaigns and offer them to your consumers throughout your campaigns. The platform allows you to manage all your websites from centralised and safe management with a flat-cost structure.
• Digital Signage and Way-finding: You can display any type of content on your screens quickly and easily. It’s incredibly user-friendly, which means you can get the content up and running in minutes. As it’s cloud-based, all content and screen management is handled remotely, so it’s easy to reliably control and update screens across multiple locations. With the wayfinding you can offer an immersive experience to your visitors. To Monetize spaces, you can use digital screens to schedule commercial information across your shopping mall.
• Targeting the right audience: You can streamline your communication with the consumers with the help of shopping mall websites, loyalty apps, digital signage, etc. It improves your overall marketing efforts and allows you to share important data.

As a result, you can get a competitive edge over others while providing an optimal shopping experience to your consumers.

Connectivity and Shopping Malls: Seeing the Big Picture

As the world is rapidly and fully moving towards sales digitalisation, it is more than vital for the shopping malls to understand the importance of connectivity, this will allow the malls to become hybrid online in a physical space.

However, it requires a lot of planning and proper implementation to ensure that it provides shopping malls with real connectivity between the managers, tenants, and consumers.

Incorporating the new trends, such as Augmented Reality, which allows your shoppers to have an immersive experience, or e-Commerce click-and-collect model enabling a hybrid state-of-the-art experience, bridges the gap between the brick-and-mortar and clicks that shopping malls need.

It’s inevitable that consumers and tenants will embrace change to fully move towards digitalisation with arms wide open. Consequently, Shopping malls need to conquer better connectivity frontiers that will help them sustainably keep their brick and mortar business and the direct relationship with the consumers.

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About Jean Carlos Delgado

Editor, Retail Real Estate Tech Blog

A resourceful brand, marketing, and business development professional with over a decade of international experience in marketing, branding, technology and business development. His professional background comes from working with global brands in different continents and the growth of diverse and innovative teams.
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