How will You Manage a Mall?

Mall management has been identified as a critical factor for the success of malls and the retail industry across the world.It is one of the most vital things that all malls should undertake to have a bright future. Currently,not all the malls in Kerala havedesignated mall management firms.Large real estate developers like Globally, mall management broadly includes: positioning a mall, zoning– formulating the right tenant mix and its placement in a mall, promotions and marketing,facility management and finance management.

Positioning a Mall

Positioning a mall refers to defining the category of services offered based on demographics of the region,psychographics of the area, income level of the natives, competition in neighboring areas and extensive market research of the catchment.For example, if the market research indicates that the average number of people living in a particular area belongs to the upper middle class,then a high-end retail mall would suit that particular location.

Zoning – Formulating the Right Tenant Mix and Its Placement in a Mall

Tenant mix refers to the combination of retail shops occupying space in a mall. A right tenant mix would behaving the right outlets that sell the right products based on the needs of the consumers that come to the particular mall. The outlets should produce optimum sales, rents, service to the community and should match finance ability of the shopping mall venture. Zoning refers to the division of mall space into zones for the placement of various retailers. This is not as easy as it sounds. The behavior pattern of different age group and how they consume are all different.Zoning has to be done appropriately to suit them all. How the mall is zoned with the placement of retailers of various goods/services will depend on the success of the mall. A mall is dependent on the success of its tenants, which translates to the financial feasibility of the tenant in the mall.

Promotions and Marketing

Promotional activities and events are an important part of mall management. Activities like food festivals, summer contests,exhibitions, special day celebration sand celebrity visits increase footfalls. Organizing cultural events has always proved vital in attracting consumers to a mall. Such activities may also act as a differentiator for a mall. Developers can work on drafting marketing strategies for individual malls to meet the needs of the local consumer base and the challenges of local, and in some cases,regional competitors.

Facility Management

Facility management refers to the integration of people, place, safety,maintenance, process and technology in a building. It also means optimal utilization of resources to meet organizational needs. It broadly includes infrastructure, ambiance and traffic management. All the backstage props should not interfere with the overall appearance of the malls.Even a fire extinguisher can look odd if you don’t place it in a way that it doesn’t become an obstruction to the aesthetics of a mall. Most of them alls in Kerala have succeeded to accommodate huge parking facilities.

FinanceManagement

Professional financial management of a mall is a must. Financial management of a mall involves monitoring and controlling of various issues such as cash receipts and collection of income including rentals, service charges, car park receipts, electricity and other utility income developing accounting systems to track the ageing of debts,payment delay patterns, bad debts and payment of all invoices and expenses developing standard financial templates so that a detailed annual property budget is prepared at time.Kerala has some of the best malls not only in the country, but in the world.Malayalis have showed tremendous interest whenever a new mall has come up. But they have been choosy and have encouraged only the best of the lot. The upcoming years will see many more malls in God’s own country. Kerala is indeed moving forward. One wishes to see more and more of these pleasant changes.

SUNWAY PYRAMID SHOPPING MALL