Evaluation on shopping mall renovations : lesson from the link

Abstract

Shopping centres play an important role of Hong Kong people’s lifestyle, as they are not just places for shopping but also for community and social activities. They can provide products and services including entertainment, supermarket, dining, daily products and also other special services.

However, the overall standard for shopping centre declines over time. To deal with aged properties, shopping renovation project is a possible solution. In this paper, the needs and importance of the shopping centre renovations are assessed. From the source of existing literature, the needs of shopping centre renovations come from the failure to meet the customer satisfactions and the lack of competitiveness against other shopping centres. Renovation projects can provide improvement to the existing facilities and enhance the overall value of the shopping centres. Renovation works do not only extend the building life and make the building more desirable and economically valuable, but they can be treated as a tool to fulfill some special objectives decided by the developers.

For the next objective, upon the completed renovation projects by the Link REIT, their outcomes are assessed. To achieve this objective, seven criteria leading to shopping centre success are introduced. They are accessibility, visibility, anchor tenants, design and layout, size, tenant mix, trade mix and environment. The overall performance for pre renovation and pro renovation are measured based on these criteria and their substantial factors. For quantitative measurement, questionnaires are used for the measurement and there is an overall improvement recorded as shown by increment of scores in the seven criteria. For qualitative measurement, in-depth interviews are applied and detail ways for improvement are collected.

Finally, this research investigates the area of improvement and further suggestions will be advised in future projects. They include regular communication with target groups (tenants and shoppers), continuous minor improvements applied to the completed projects to slow down performance backslide and also the enhancement of social responsibility towards different stakeholders.