The convenience of online shopping has changed the retail landscape forever.
“Consumer behaviour … where and how they want to shop has been completely upended,” Charles de Brabant, executive director at the Bensadoun School of Retail Management said. “Retail is dead. Long live Amazon.”
De Brabant said roughly 15 to 20 per cent of shopping done in North America is done online.
But despite new shopping habits, small- and mid-market shopping malls are finding a new way to thrive.
In Regina’s Victoria Square Mall for example, an arcade, mini-golf and completely local food court make up some of the biggest attractions.
“You’re not just limited to retail clothing,” Victoria Square Mall marketing coordinator Jordan Myers said. “(Malls) branch out to many services like doctors, dentists, entertainment, arcades, mini-golf, and playgrounds.”
Others, like the Southland Mall, have spaces like a library, movie theatre and a car dealership as tenants.
Get daily National news
It’s part of the community hub approach malls have begun to take rather than strictly a shopping experience.
“People need more,” Mitchell Cohen, the Northgate Mall owner said. “People need … experiential reasons to go to a shopping centre and not just to buy clothes or buy sporting goods or electronics because they can do it online.”
Those at Victoria Square say the change is paying off big time.
“Since we’ve adapted this we’ve had record traffic counts even prior to 2019,” Myers said.
In Saskatoon, Confederation Mall is also putting more of a focus on community engagement.
“Two years ago we launched a kids club and it’s not uncommon to see 200 kids coming to that,” Brooke Lang, the Confederation Mall property manager said. “We’re generating foot traffic in other ways and we’re offering like pop-up markets and certainly working on adding services.”
She said these changes to operations are what’s helping keep the mall alive. And while it is hard to compete with shopping from your phone, Lang hopes people will continue to take in all the mall has to offer.
