PRESENCE OF UPSCALE INTERNATIONAL RETAILERS IN SUBURBAN MALL: THE MAIN REASON BEHIND ITS SUCCESS

Abstract

The retail scene in Singapore has become increasingly competitive. To enhance their drawing power and generate higher shopper traffic, suburban malls have adopted strategic initiatives to differentiate themselves from the other conventional retail centres by housing upscale international retailers which previously had presence in urban malls only. This study examines how the entry of such retailers is able to increase the attractiveness of suburban malls. It also investigates whether the presence of upscale international retailers is the main contributing factor behind the success of recently developed suburban malls and how this will diminish the market share of urban malls. A Binary Logistic Regression (BLR) analysis suggests that tenant related factors have a greater impact on the attractiveness of malls as compared to site and environment related factors, achieving the highest odds ratio of 2.844 at a 5% significance level. The presence of upscale international retailers was also tested empirically via a one way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) to determine if it contributes more to the success of suburban or urban malls. The MANOVA results suggest that its presence plays a more significant role in the success of suburban malls, with a mean value of 3.93 at a 10% significance level. Furthermore, the BLR findings also indicate that such retailers with their high drawing power to attract shopper traffic is the main reason behind the success of suburban malls, achieving the highest odds ratio of 3.469 at a 5% significance level. The presence of upscale international retailers, provision of extensive F&B facilities, and the availability of a diverse range of retail services are found to be the top three features perceived by consumers to account for the attractiveness of suburban malls.