The talk of experiential marketing is going on for over five years now. It is no longer perceived as an exotic effervescence of an imaginative mind. A number of brand owners are adopting the fundamentals of experiential marketing to delight shoppers with the intention of converting them into loyal customers. The retail stores, as a result, have undergone change even in little known streets.
But the same thought, however, has not percolated down to all the mall developers and promoters. A number of them continue to believe that a mall is a hub, a physical structure housing retail stores with air-conditioning thrown in. While private investment is critical, the retail stores, which make the soul of the mall, shouldn’t become unaffordable when the market is ripe and many brands are waiting to expand their footprint.
There are ways of maximizing profit, but the model so far practiced by the promoters has decelerated the pace of mall journey. The build and sell attitude of promoters is responsible for the poor maintenance of malls. There is no mall management, as the promoter has made his money and is no longer interested. The store owners in such cases should come together and form a mall management. The fact is a mall is an amplified version of a multi-brand store. Each component plays a role. The retail mix, the architecture, services such as washroom, lifts, security and parking all make a mall an experience zone. The promotional activities would only then make sense.
