Managing The Shopping Centre Formula: Saturation Or New Development?

The marketing and financial success of a shopping centre is dependent on many factors. Among the main features, the relevant literature (Ghosh & McLafferty, 1987; Wrigley, 1988; Cliquet, 1992; Guy, 1994; Cohen, 2000) suggests the follows: the quality of location and accessibility, the catchments size area, the car-parking provision, the design and the environment. A full line-up of strong and well-placed traders (tenant mix) is also important because the sales performance is dependent on the level and type of footfall attracted and may also be relying on micro-retail linkages. The success of individual tenants and the success of a centre as a whole are interdependent and enhanced by the cumulative synergy generated by the mix of stores. The combination of all these factors is decisive on whether or not a developer/owner will find a successful formula from the standpoint of the potential tenants and consumers. This contribution begins to describe the recent development of planned shopping centres in Italy with the emphasis on the current crisis of consumption. The analysis shows how, over the last decade, shopping centres in Italy has almost doubled, but as this growth is not uniform. New spatial hierarchies with different commercial polarity emerge clearly. The main question is: are we in a scenario of spatial retail demand saturation ñ in front of the alternative sale channels ñ or will be possible to push up the shopping centre formula in the future? To answer this question, our work takes under consideration the valuation tools able to describe and capture the consumer behaviour changing and to translate it in the market share patronage and retail management dimension. In this direction a brief taxonomy of different approaches is sketched and a demonstrative case is showed.