Malls launch aggressive campaigns

Major shopping malls have launched aggressive marketing campaigns to boost traffic and stimulate spending during the low season.

They are well aware that consumers have lost purchasing power due to the higher cost of living.

"We witnessed local shoppers growing more concerned about their spending," Nattakit Tangpoonsinthana, executive vice president for marketing at Central Pattana, said last week.

Central Pattana runs the CentralWorld shopping complex.

"The sales decline at our food court by 10 per cent in June compared to May is a vital indicator showing that consumers have started to adjust to the higher inflation and living costs by spending less and saving more," he said.

The company has to be more proactive as it can see no positive signs for the next three months and consumers still lack confidence in the economic and political situation, Nattakit said.

"As a shopping-mall operator, we need to work harder than before in cooperating with our retail anchors to launch attractive marketing campaigns aimed at serving the diverse needs, interests and lifestyles of consumers. The move is to keep up the momentum in drawing shoppers to the store," he said.

CentralWorld has organised 40-50 marketing campaigns every week to draw shoppers to its huge complex. Many stores have also launched bigger promotions with huge discounts of 40-50 per cent, compared to 20-30 per cent before.

Suthisa Pumpradon, marketing manager for Seacon Development, operator of Seacon Square, said the company had started feeling an impact in June, when visitor counts slipped by 2-3 per cent from last year. However, the number of motorcycles entering the complex dropped even more, by 4.7 per cent.

 "This showed that low- to lower-medium-income earners, who have motorcycles as their major means of transportation, had been significantly impacted and started to adjust their spending habits with fewer trips to dine out or go shopping. This segment make fewer visits to shopping malls."

"We also found that many of our tenants have started to suffer cash-flow problems and have approached us about making their monthly rent payments," she said. About 10 per cent of all tenants delayed their payments by five to 10 days.

Many vendors, particularly of furniture, IT and fashion-oriented items, have scaled down marketing events at the shopping complex. Chamnarn Maytaprechakul, senior chief marketing officer of The Mall Group, said lower to medium income-earners, or "C-class" consumers, were suffering the most, which would be bad news for discount stores, which cater to this group. "We got less of an impact from the situation as the main shoppers at our shopping centres are people from C-plus to A-class," he said.