MARKETING STRATEGY OF CHINATOWN POINT - A CRITIQUE

Abstract

Chinatown, an ethnic centre famous for its bazaar style of trading, has experienced marked changes in the past decade and is fast losing its character. Old shophouses are rapidly giving way to modern multi-storey shopping centres. Chinatown Point is the most recent addition to this group of modern retail developments. However, rather than being a twin brother to those existing surrounding shopping centres, it has decided to create an "image" or identity for itself by going upmarket. It hopes to capture the higher-income clientele of the local population as well as tourists. Thus, this also means that a higher class type of tenants need to be brought in to create the upmarket image. The proposed upmarket image concept can be put into reality only if there is a well planned and well implemented marketing strategy. Thus this study sets out to examine the effectiveness of the strategy adopted by the centre. In so doing, both qualitative and quantitative analyses are employed. A survey was also carried out to gauge the effectiveness of the strategy from the tenants' viewpoint. The results of the study indicated that on the whole the marketing strategy of Chinatown Point was effective and the tenants secured were generally able to project the upmarket image campaigned for by the developer.