Survival of Small-scale shopping malls in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study investigates how the small-scale shopping malls could be survived in the highly competitive shopping mall industry in Hong Kong with reference to the one of the famous small-scale shopping malls, Kwai Chung Plaza. As the top ten popular shopping malls in Hong Kong are all operated by Sun Hung Kei Properties, Hyson, Landmark where are located in Central Business District or downtown, the small-scale shopping malls are owned by small developers or varieties owners. Without the financial support from developer, the resource allocation by the small-scale shopping malls could not be compared whilst the survival of small-scale shopping malls is limited under the shadow of regional shopping malls. Some became dead mall or greyfield that neither shoppers nor tenants would go inside the mall. Without a stable rental income, owners unlikely pay the management fee so the overall maintenance and management of dead mall maintains in basic or even poor level. However, the shopping centers owned by Link REIT were sold one by one, which demonstrates those shopping centers are valuable in the eyes of other capital fund companies.