SMALL TENANTS, BIG VALUES : JAKARTA'S RETAIL SCENE

Abstract

In the past decade, there has been a phenomenon of the infiltration of more non-merchandise tenants in Jakarta malls. These smaller non-merchandise tenants usually consist of F&B outlets, entertainment facilities and tenants that provide services to shoppers. They have recently been replacing departmental stores and the other bigger-space taking tenants as the crowd puller. Shopping Centre managements are having the difficult task of giving shoppers a ‘One-stop Shopping’ experience. There must a fine balance between the attributes in the mall to achieve a good integration of lifestyle and traditional mall features. Therefore, the study aims to investigate the new phenomenon through shoppers’ image of the lifestyle and traditional mall. The study found that the image structures of the expected mall in general, lifestyle and traditional malls to be different. This indicates that there is still a gap between the ideal mall and the current lifestyle and traditional mall. The study also found that various socio-demographic factors could affect the preference for the type of mall. It was found that respondents who are below 40 years old prefer lifestyle mall but the older respondents mainly like traditional mall as it has departmental store. It is found that both types of malls have different age-target groups and hence the traditional malls are not redundant yet. However, mall managers have to find the best way to integrate the lifestyle and traditional mall features together. Recommendations such as adding more facilities to the mall and introducing more unique merchandise tenants were suggested.