PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

KNOW THY MALL SHOPPER

Research reveals the what, when, where and why of U.S. mall visits

By Joel Groover

When it comes to shopping, Tip Kim has a split personality. The 32-year-old accountant often walks into Atlanta’s Perimeter Mall with a crisp shopping list and a purse full of coupons. Her aim is to zip in, pick up specific bargains at specific stores and waste as little of her increasingly precious time as possible.

“Especially when you have kids now, you can’t just spend hours going shopping,” said Kim, the mother of an infant, Sophie, and a toddler, Max. “You have to be more efficient.”

And yet, when the opportunity for a leisurely stroll does present itself, Kim actually enjoys killing time with her family at the mall. “We go for entertainment, usually on Friday after work or on Saturday,” she said. “We’ll eat dinner and walk around. Max likes to throw money in the water fountain, things like that.”

Such contradictory attitudes about shopping illustrate one of the challenges facing today’s mall owners: how to meet the myriad needs of consumers who, rather than “live to shop,” expect malls to be flexible enough to conform to their own busy lives.

An ICSC analysis of more than 23,600 exit interviews with U.S. mall shoppers underscores that point. This data, gathered at 52 regional and super-regional malls in 2004, reveals that time-pressed shoppers put a premium on efficiency. “They are making fewer visits to the mall, but spending more money per trip,” wrote Veronica V. Soriano, an ICSC senior research analyst, in a report. Indeed, the average number of visits per month to U.S. malls, which held steady at 3.4 from 1998 to 2001, fell to 2.9 in 2004, the lowest since ICSC began tracking the data 10 years ago. At the same time, however, total spending per visit reached a record high of $86.30 per shopper.

Meanwhile, “the mall is becoming ‘more’ than a shopping destination,” Soriano wrote. “[Consumers] are increasingly going there to attend a special event or movie, dine at a restaurant or perhaps take a stroll.” In fact, 16 percent of those surveyed in 2004 cited something other than shopping as the primary reason for their mall trip.

That is probably no coincidence, says Barbara J. Ivankovich, SCMD, vice president of mall marketing and corporate relations at Chattanooga, Tenn.-based CBL & Associates Properties. Landlords now employ an arsenal of strategies designed to broaden the mall’s appeal, she says.

Customer research reveals, for example, that families make trips specifically to enjoy children’s play areas at CBL malls such as Arbor Place, in Douglasville, Ga. “We’ve made a focused effort to put play areas into our shopping centers,” Ivankovich said. “We see shoppers staying longer when they have that type of venue.” The company also taps the drawing power of popular eateries, high-tech theaters and major promotions such as its recent NASCAR-themed Coca-Cola Racing Family Experience tour.

If part of the thinking behind such efforts is to extend shopper visits, the survey illustrates why: Shoppers who stayed longer than three hours spent about $167.50 on average; those who shopped for less than 30 minutes spent about $53.10. “Total spending increases with each minute spent at the mall,” wrote Soriano.

No wonder some experts view the drive toward efficiency with concern. “Probably the No. 1 challenge for shopping center developers, retailers and marketing people is the lack of time that we see for that busy 25-to-54-year-old group,” said Rebecca L. Maccardini, SCMD, president of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based RMResources.

How should malls respond? One approach might be to steal a page from Las Vegas casinos and use clever tricks to slow people down by getting them lost. But that could backfire if it brings harried shoppers’ simmering frustrations to a boil. (Gamblers, after all, tend to be on vacation.) No, a better bet for boosting return visits would be to make each customer’s mall experience as pleasant as possible, says Garry Butcher, SCMD, vice president of marketing and consumer research at The Macerich Co.

The science of facilitating shopping, by providing easy-to-read directional signage and store directories, for instance, or by placing helper personnel throughout the mall, has never been more important, Butcher says. Busy shoppers also appreciate malls that logically group retailers by price point and category, says Maccardini.

Consolidation among department stores also makes it easier for malls to aid multitasking consumers by adding convenience-oriented big boxes such as Target and Costco, says retail historian Robert Spector, author of Category Killers: The Retail Revolution and its Impact on Consumer Culture. “Ultimately, this will raise the number of overall visits,” he said. “There will be more reasons to go to the mall.”

And because efficient shoppers often use the Internet to plan their trips in detail, the need to reach them with marketing messages and operational information about stores, hours and driving directions extends to mall Web sites, says Michael P. McCarty, senior vice president of research and corporate communications at Simon Property Group.

Not that efficiency is top-of-mind for every shopper. Standing by the fountain near Bloomingdale’s at Perimeter Mall, Atlanta teens Nicole Tucker and Alana Flowers follow no particular itinerary. Some shoppers might preplan with pinpoint accuracy, but Alana struggles to remember the names of her favorite stores. A typical visit, says Nicole, involves hanging out at the mall for about three hours.

Of those surveyed, teens stayed longer at malls than any other age group — an average of 93.4 minutes in 2004, compared with an overall average of 80.6 minutes. They also shopped there four times a month, as over against the total average of 2.9. Despite their ballyhooed spending power, however, teens 14-to-17-years-old came in dead last in average spending per visit, at $42.30. The biggest spenders? Boomers 55 to 64, who spent about $107.60 each. Perhaps that is not surprising, given their maturity and their years building earning power. Even so, there is room to make further productive use of that demographic reality, some say. “That 55-plus group represents an opportunity we may not be taking full advantage of in the shopping center industry,” said Maccardini.

This age group also posted the highest department store conversion rate, walking out with a purchase 70 percent of the time on average, and they visited department stores twice as often as 14-to-24-year-olds. Clearly, Terry J. Lundgren, CEO of Federated Department Stores, and others are on the right track when they talk about the need to reconnect with younger generations, McCarty says.

Their efforts may already be bearing fruit with such shoppers as Jenni Wadsworth, a 32-year-old fund-raiser who occasionally drives two hours roundtrip from Athens, Ga., to Perimeter Mall. “The anchor stores at Georgia Square Mall, in Athens — Belk’s and Macy’s — have started carrying specialty items like MAC Cosmetics and Bobbi Brown that I could normally find only in Atlanta,” Wadsworth said. “They seem to be doing a good job of adapting and making sure they get big-name products.”

Wadsworth also gives malls in general high marks. Judging from the survey results, she is not alone. “Conversion rates at both department stores and mall shops increased sharply in 2004 and were the highest on record in ICSC’s database,” Soriano wrote.

According to a familiar formula among prognosticators of the past decade, “The regional mall faces imminent decline due to the growing threat posed by ‘X.’ ” The variable has been, at different times, Internet shopping, category killers, lifestyle centers and the shakeup of traditional department stores. Yet the hard numbers continue to reflect stability rather than upheaval, Soriano says.

This remarkable continuity comes as no surprise to Spector. “It keeps on changing, but to a certain extent it is the same, with a twist,” he said.