IMPACTS OF PROMOTIONAL ACTIVITIES ON MALL PATRONAGE

Abstract

With a small size of the retail market such as Singapore, it is important for mall developers to find a niche segment and maintain the competitive advantage for each shopping mall, especially shopping centers that locate in the Orchard shopping district. Sales promotion is an important marketing tool that has been increasingly used by marketing managers. Past studies have focused on the impacts of promotional activities in terms of traffic, increase in sales and demographics of shoppers such as age and gender. Furthermore, researchers have attempted to classify the shoppers into different categories to better prepare marketing plan to suit their needs. For this study, the author focuses on two groups of shoppers: utilitarian and hedonic. Hence, this research aims to explore the relationship between promotional activities and typology of shoppers by testing two hypotheses: (1) Hedonic shoppers tend to be attracted to entertainment-based promotional activities and (2) Utilitarian shoppers tend to be attracted to price-based promotional activities. In addition, the research wants to find out to what extent different mall attributes influence customer’s choices of shopping destinations and if there exists a difference in terms of preference of promotional activities based on gender. To meet these objectives, a survey was conducted on a total of 200 responses, with 50 respondents each from the shopping malls of ION Orchard, Ngee Ann City, Vivocity and Bugis Junction. The results collected are analyzed using various tools like descriptive statistics, factor analysis and ANOVA analysis. The result has noted some interesting findings. Firstly, though it is clear that hedonic and utilitarian shoppers tend to be attracted to price-based and entertainment-based promotional activities, the significant difference is seen most clearly in six out of eight activities examined. Especially activity such as lottery (lucky draw) is perceived to be least popular among shoppers of both groups. Next, among the four shopping malls selected for the study, ION Orchard receives the most number of attributes that have the highest ratings. The result also shows that there is significant difference in rankings between the malls in nine out of the twenty-four mall attributes listed. Lastly, between two group females and males, only fashion show displays significance in terms of preference while the other activities share the same level of ratings. These results have significant implications for mall manager in terms of marketing strategies. In general, to increase the attractiveness of the shopping malls, mall managers can improve on the attributes that receive the lower ratings among patrons compared to their competitors and increase the activities that are preferred by the target group of the mall. Activity such as lottery (also known as lucky draw) can improve their attractiveness by reframing such that shoppers can perceive greater benefit from the deal.