Shopping mall repositioning : a case study of New Town Plaza

Abstract

Hong Kong is an international metropolis and “Shopping Paradise”. Therefore, shopping in Hong Kong becomes one of the popular and important customary activities for the people. To compete with the keen and rapid change of market competition and shoppers’ living style and prevent old and deteriorated mall image, it is important for mall owner and operator to upkeep mall’s competitiveness by refurbishment work and repositioning exercises. To examine the repositioning strategies of Shopping Mall in Hong Kong, case study of New Town Plaza would be the selected mall in this research for further evaluation. Face to face interviews were conducted with Shoppers and Tenants respectively regarding their perception of mall image and competiveness attributes, including mall image, shopping environment and accessibility attributes among selected shopping mall-New Town Plaza before and after refurbishment work. At last, it found that mall repositioning exercise had drawn a great influence on different stakeholders. Based on research result, it showed that interviewees generally recognized that brand image of tenants, mall’s image and competiveness were improved after mall refurbishment. Also, more high-ended shoppers were attracted to visit and shop in the mall. As comparing with before refurbishment work, Interviewees were visited more and stayed longer due to its freshness image and modern design. Although mall refurbishment work and repositioning exercise brings lots of positive feedbacks for different stakeholders and extend the product life of the mall, it does not represent such exercise appropriate for applying in all shopping mall. Therefore, mall owner or operator was reminded to take further consideration for planning such work and finally recommendations were suggested for them in considering the repositioning and refurbishment work in the future too.