Discover any retail or service needs for that shopper that may be underrepresented in the
current marketplace.
Interview existing shopping centre tenants for their input as to what their customers need and
want.
Interview shoppers that attend the property regularly to find out what they would like to see in
the property.
Be aware of trends that affect your marketplace. A metropolitan area community, for example,
may include many commuters who might add an hour or more to their workday getting to and
from work. This kind of community should have a clear need for extended child care, or mealtime
help in the form of home delivery or prepared foods.
he core strategy of a new retail shopping centre is the placement of the anchor tenants from which the
tenancy mix will pivot and spread from. Most particularly these anchor tenants will be the drawcard
and the major image that customers identify with the property. Tenants will also see the anchor tenant
as integral to the occupancy that they may consider for themselves.
Supermarkets
Department stores
Major tenants that serve the community at large
Destination specialty retailers (eg Hardware or Post Office
Al Ries and Jack Trout said that to develop a positioning program, six critical questions must be
answered. They are;
What position do you own in the mind of the prospect, now?
What position do you want to own?
Whom must you outgun to achieve that position?
Do you have enough money?
Items/Statements
Service
Reliability
Attractiveness
Country of Origin
Name of the offer, leaders in the market, extra features, choice, wide range
Selectivity
The implementation of Walters and Laffys (1996) four groups of activities is considered as
positioning. Various positioning strategy descriptors identified by Skallerud, Gronhaug
(2009) are given below in table 2. Levy and Weitz (2001) consider retail positioning as a
decision and implementation of a retail mix to create an image of the retailer in the customers
mind relative to its competitors. Aaker and Shansby (1982), claim that positioning decision is
the crucial strategic decision as it is highly important for customers perception decisions.
Marketing program can be aligned for consistency and support if there is a clear positioning
strategy.
Aaker and Shansby (1982) give six approaches to positioning strategy which are given as
below:
and Environment
Customer Service
Customer
Communication
Source: As adapted from Skallerud,
Gronhaug (2009)
Positioning with Respect to Use or Application Associates the product with use or
application.
Positioning by the Product User - Product associated with a user or a class of users.
Positioning by attribute
Mall
Zero Positioning
Gradual Positioning
Radical Positioning
Source: As adapted from Retail Repositioning Strategies by Corstjens and Doyle (1989)
Positioning vs. Image
Martineau (1958) defines image of a retail outlet as a combination of functional and psychological
attributes. Ries and Trout(1972) claim that positioning is a marketing strategy. Jones & Meghraj
Report (2007) says that Positioning of a mall refers to defining the category of services offered
based on demographics, psychographics, income levels and competition in neighbouring areas.
Sannapu and Singh (2011) define mall positioning as a process of fulfilling of dual
expectations of each of the stake holders shoppers, retailers and mall developers. To
distinguish between positioning and image, positioning differs from image in the sense,
positioning has a clear reference to competition (Aaker & Shansby, 1982). An image of a mall
includes its aesthetics, design, spaciousness, premium merchandise, life style products, pleasant
ambience, large visual displays, wide corridors and artful lighting. However the positioning of
a mall could be as simple as a Luxury Mall. Hence it can be concluded that a positioning based
shopper decision making is much easier than an image based shopper decision making.
Positioning and Shopper Satisfaction
As per Morschett, et al. (2005) shopper satisfaction is affected by the physical environment of the
store, various procedures and operations, personnel and the core offer of the retailer. This evaluation
of the total retailer's offer in the customers mind is defined by Martineau (1958) as "store
image(which later has been replaced by positioning). Shoppers evaluate the whole retailer offer by
combining all the attributes described above in order to decide their degree of satisfaction (Finn and
Louviere, 1996)
Mall Name
DLF Emporia,
Positioning
Luxury Mall
Delhi
Sahara Mall,
Image
Mall with aesthetic design, spacious, premium merchandise, life
Income Group
Gurgaon
experience. The least positive influence is caused by the positioning construct ambience, perhaps
because it is taken for granted as all the malls are able to provide good ambience.
Recommendations:
A well planned and implemented strategic positioning is critical for the success of malls in India. A
well designed mall with appealing aesthetics may not be sufficient to ensure a malls success. The
confusion related to an image based strategy can be avoided by following a positioning based
strategy which has a clear advantage over the former. Positioning of a mall is different from
positioning a consumer product. With the same ingredients a consumer product can be positioned in
different ways. However a malls positioning is inherently related to its tenant mix. Hence, keeping
in view, the inseparability of a malls retail mix and its positioning, there is a need to align a malls
offer with its positioning. A mere location based advantage is out dated and is does not ensure
footfall at places where the number of malls is increasing. Hence positioning strategy needs to
include factors other than those based on location.
News Clipping:
The positioning of fashion retail outlets such as shoes and accessories presents within malls an
interesting scenario. In the first place, international brands will typically always occupy prime ground
floor space in malls, regardless of category. Some fashion brands are genuinely of high repute and
command instant recall in the minds of customers and the developers. Premium price points over
Indian brands active in the same retail category are invariably a factor, with import duty and superior
product quality playing a role. In the case of such brands, prime space on the ground floor is usually
axiomatic and non-negotiable.
Domestic footwear brands will usually be allocated space in a zone that is decided upon by the leasing
team, and casual footwear brands tend to be clustered together. Similarly, sports footwear and apparel
brands will also share a common zone. Obviously, positioning within a mall will also be dictated by
the price points of the merchandise being sold. Accessory brands will usually occupy spaces adjacent
to fast fashion brands, or at entry points / high footfall points with high visibility, since such purchases
are usually done on impulse.
Preferred zoning that allows international brands to hog the limelight in malls is a fact of life, and
based on various fundamentals. For example, a customer of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes does not fall
in the same category as a customer who will buy shoes from Indian footwear brands, regardless of the
domestic brand's overall value proposition. When one is talking of price tags in the neighbourhood of
Rs. 30000 for an Italian footwear brand vis--vis Rs. 4000 for a domestic brand, the ballgame changes.
That said, footwear brands such as Hush Puppies, Metro and Mochi are the preferred choice of daily
wear for a large cross section of Indian shoppers. These shoppers may still occasionally wear a pair of
shoes by Ferragamos, but expect visible access to 'routine' brands as well. It therefore emerges that
such footwear brands deserve and are assigned suitably visible zones within a mall.
With increasing exposure, Indian shoppers are definitely acquiring a taste for international brands in
footwear and fashion accessories. Such brands are now becoming a common sight in the metros, and
are being given visibility in the malls of larger cities. The kind of positioning they get in metro-centric
malls will depend on how long the brand has been around in the Indian space - in other words, over
what period brand recall has had a chance to firm up. A classic example would be the kind of brands
which opened up in Select City Walk Mall, Saket when it opened its doors six years ago. Regardless
of where their stores were within the mall at that time, they currently occupy prime ground space in
the mall.