U.S. regional and super-regional mall attributes and their relationship to retail productivity : an exploratory investigation

The current retail environment is characterized as fiercely competitive due to surplus retail space coupled with decreasing consumer spending. These conditions have been especially detrimental to the performance of U.S. regional and super-regional malls. Decreasing performance, changing trade area demographics and outdated facilities have been the impetus for several successful mall renovations and repositionings. Due to the success stories, a major shopping center trade association supported investigation into successful repositioning strategies so that recommendations could be made to low performing malls. Methods were to be sought that would allow “B” and “C” malls (average to low performers) to be analogous to “A” malls (high performers). The researcher identified a problem associated with the performance classification system. It was subjective and inconsistent. This study was an attempt to identify “A” mall specifications, to determine attributes of successful regional and super-regional malls and investigate their relationship to productivity. A self-administered survey was employed to gather information about mall characteristics along five dimensions. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Results indicate that “A” malls are larger and located in densely populated trade areas that have a large segment of consumers earning high income levels. The market strategy attributes, the elements within the control of the marketing manager, did not distinguish the high and low performing regional and super-regional malls.