HOW CAN SHOPPING CENTRES SURVIVE AND PROSPER – THE FOUR PILLARS OF ‘FUTURE READINESS’

We are living in a V.U.C.A era, one that is full of vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

Ibrahim Ibrahim Managing Director Portland Design

The changes that we are experiencing in retail are not cyclical, but structural. Consumers have changed unrecognisably, and what we are witnessing is being shaped not by retailers, design, architecture or technology but by the rapidly changing relationship consumers have with brands, places and each other. We call this ‘Retail Darwinism’, whereby consumers’ expectations change faster than brands and businesses can adapt!

Hermetically sealed, inflexible, disconnected shopping centres will become increasingly irrelevant. To survive, they will have to make the shift from a ‘shopping rhythm’ to a ‘community rhythm’ to become more permeable, open and connected to their communities and the public realm through activations such as events, markets and community activities.

A recent survey from Accenture found that “70% of millennials would rather spend on an experience than an object.” Shopping centres that prosper will have more than transactional retail and will bring together a mix of brands, amenities, nonretail uses and experiences that attract new audiences with constant refreshment, newness and surprise.

Increasingly shopping centres can no longer rely on leasing boxes and collecting rent. The future of retail will not be about real estate, it will be about content, the curation of blended commercial offers and compelling experiences of which leasing is a by-product.

For too long, placemaking has been driven by architecture where the focus on the shapes of plans and buildings drives the approach. Architecture does not make place. The process of placemaking must be driven by a deep understanding of people and communities, those who will be engaging with the place, and their journeys and missions at different day parts.

Ibrahim is the Managing Director of Portland Design based in London which was established in 1987. Ibrahim originally trained as an aeronautical engineer and is a postgraduate of the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a regular speaker at conferences and a frequent contributor to journals and trade presses.

At Portland we employ our 5-step process of placemaking:

The first is culture:this involves research and analysis of key cultural and consumer trends that will impact our audiences’ behaviour and expectations.

The second step is people: Through qualitative and quantitative data analytics we gain an evidence-based understanding of the community, interest groups and profiles of our audience. This is essential if we are to deliver relevant offers and experiences that meet their needs and desires. Research by Unibail-RodamcoWestfield revealed that “One-third of people are interested in attending a lifestyle class at their favourite store.”

The third step is the place story: Here, we help define the vision, ambition and proposition, and from that craft the ‘place story’. We interrogate the origins and history of the place and explore its attributes, unique features, community, connectivity and physical environment in order to define the place’s personality, values and positioning in the market.

The fourth step is space: Here, we translate the above into the ‘experience masterplan’, defining the right blend of brands, experiences, services and amenities, whilst identifying the synergies between them and their connectivity to each other and the public realm. The experience master plan defines the ‘connective tissue’ that binds the experiences and districts and activates the public realm to imbue it with an authentic ‘spirit of place’ and sense of belonging. Our master planning approach is imbued with flexibility and programmability to allow future changes, in order to respond to the rapidly changing expectations of consumers and commercial partners.

Only at the fifth Design step do we drill into the design of the physical environment to create the final masterplan, architecture, environmental design and materiality. Environmental, social and economic sustainability runs through the bloodstream of our thinking and design approach, which again has built-in flexibility and adaptability.

We must create places not through the lens of real estate but through the three lenses of ‘community’, ‘culture’, and ‘content’, where real estate is a by-product.

1. REINVENT CONVENIENCE: Consumers demand experiences that are easy, simple and devoid of complexity. They will respond to autonomous, frictionless experiences and convenient ‘pit-stop’ services. A survey by Seigel and Gale found that “63% of global consumers are willing to pay more for simpler experiences.”

2. RECONNECT TO COMMUNITY: Hermetically sealed, dreary, clone shopping centres and high streets are becoming irrelevant due to the disconnection with their communities, the public realm and surrounding streetscapes. Successful places will be those that deliver experiences, amenities and services that galvanise communities and create a true sense of belonging.

3. REIMAGINE PLACE: Successful places will deliver a mix of brands and experiences that create anticipation, discovery, participation and surprise. Moving beyond retail and F&B to what Portland refer to as ‘S.W.E.L.C.H’, a blend of shopping, working, entertainment, learning, culture and hospitality.

4. REPOSITION VALUE: Our audiences increasingly value personalisation, authenticity, social experiences, health and wellness and the environment. Successful places will partner with brands that have a purpose at their core and prioritise ethical consumption and in turn, respond to the values of our consumers and communities. A recent Accenture survey found that “40% of consumers have stopped using a brand due to the way it behaves.”

The metrics of success have changed, it is no longer just about sales per sqm. In the future, a large proportion of transactions will not happen in-store. So we need to add value to the customer experience through the new KPI’s of ideas per sqm, engagement per sqm, surprises per sqm, senses per sqm, events per sqm, and shares per sqm.

In the future, successful shopping centres must speak like a magazine, change like a gallery, sell like a shop, share like an app, build loyalty like a club, seed like an incubator, experiment like a laboratory, immerse you like a game and entertain you like a show!

Often, businesses don’t fail because they do the wrong things, they fail because they continue to do what used to be the right things for too long!