As consumers become savvier, mall operators must move beyond performance and benchmarking to stay relevant and submit to retail trends. Malls will become the go-to place for brands to connect with their customers and create more personalised shopping experiences.
In Singapore, retail sales rose to 1.9 per cent for a third straight month in November 2021, as reported by the Department of Statistics Singapore. With increasing retail sales, the future of retail isn’t about brick-and-mortar vs online shopping.
However, the real opportunity will be consistently delivering new experiences and bringing physical marketplaces to a level-playing field with data visibility.
Retail customers have changed
As a Singapore-based retail-tech company, our retail data platform has paved the way for retailers in Singapore, Malaysia and The Philippines to make data-driven decisions by rejuvenating the mall as a retail ecosystem.
In our latest findings, retail customers have changed, with approximately 70 per cent of customers wanting mobile-first and unified omnichannel experiences.
Today, they have higher expectations of a mall and retail experience. They want mobile-first and unified experiences and will not tolerate customer friction and extra steps.
If a customer has to wait one day to receive rewards or is limited to how many rewards they can claim, they will simply go to another mall that provides immediate rewards without any minimum spend or maximum claim.
Dealing with the transformation of the mall business
Currently, malls are already finding ways to gather data at the store level and use it to further personalise their offerings, similar to ‘online malls’ and e-commerce platforms.
Access to significant amounts of mall management data such as consumer purchasing behaviour, sales, SKU data and real-time transactions can be a game-changer for most mall operators.
The question for most mall management and retailers isn’t whether or not they will consider it; it’s simply a question of how much they will continue to invest. 2022 will be about making better-informed business decisions.
Operating on the same level of intelligence as e-commerce
Even in a world of surging growth in new markets, e-commerce and technologies, one thing is crystal clear – that retail is and will continue to be king for the foreseeable future.
Companies that choose to shift their management paradigms to embrace this new normal first, will reap the lion’s share of benefits.
Also Read: How to ace your mega sales campaign: Best practices for merchants
The first on the list is putting customers at the centre of people’s businesses. Retail automation simplifies the manual processes and allows physical retail to operate with real-time intelligence, and run campaigns like live shopping events.
It also creates seamless customer experiences, such as instant earn-and-burn for mall loyalty points and instant car park redemption.
Secondly, make more merchants make more money, by increasing variable Gross Turnover (GTO) and running exciting campaigns, you are enabling your merchants to operate with the same level of intelligence as e-commerce.
Thirdly, running more effective partnerships can be a game-changer. The retail ecosystem is rich with many stakeholders such as banks and product brands, all vested in making the retail ecosystem successful. When this is done, malls tap on the expertise, resources and publicity of partners and have a great multiplier effect.
What’s stopping us from getting there?
Imagine mall-wide digital giveaways, physical live 11.11 events in malls or treasure hunts, voucher drops and gross merchandise value competition – all seamlessly enabled through real-time transaction data.
This could be the future. We have already seen clear visibility of real-time sales data, and all we need is to scale our processes and for departments to see the same thing.
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