Siam Piwat expands global partnerships
Siam Piwat Co, the operator of the Siam Center, Siam Discovery and Siam Paragon shopping complexes, is seeking global retail partnerships to attract more quality tourists as customers.
The company is negotiating with potential retail partners in popular tourist destinations around the world in a bid to create incentives for foreign shoppers to spend more, said Chanisa Kaewruen, Siam Piwat’s senior deputy managing director for marketing and business relations.
The company wants to draw shoppers who hold any card issued by retail partners from other countries to spend money at Siam Piwat shopping centres.
Earlier this year, Siam Piwat joined a roadshow organised by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) in Germany to draw more tourists from Europe to shop at its three shopping malls.
China and Dubai are destinations for future roadshows.
“We expect to clinch business partnerships with five foreign retail partners this year,” Ms Chanisa said.
Each retailer should have a similar positioning as Siam Piwat’s shopping complexes and target similar customers and must be in the countries that are popular among Thai people and where visiting Thailand is also popular, she explained.
Siam Piwat started using the global partnership strategy in 2014. It has joined forces with famous department stores and shopping complexes such as Japan’s Sapporo Shopping Centre, Galeries Lafayette Department Store in France, Harrods Department Store in England, South Korea’s Lotte Department Store, Hong Kong Times Square, Taipei 101 shopping mall in Taiwan, and a network of over 1,270 luxury hotels and resorts in 100 countries worldwide.
The company joined hands with Ion Orchard Shopping Mall in Singapore this month and will start a collaboration with TsUM Department Store in Russia this year.
Under the collaboration, customers who hold cards issued by these partners and cards from Siam Piwat’s retail complexes can get mutual privileges.
For example, holders of Platinum M Card and Viz Card, Siam Piwat’s two loyalty cards, will be treated well when travelling to the countries where the company has retail partners. The holders of cards issued by Siam Piwat’s retail partners can also enjoy discounts and special services at Siam Piwat’s retail network.
Ms Chanisa said the global partnership will have a member base of over 20 million worldwide and money circulating in the network will total 100 million baht per year.
“We hope the new collaboration with foreign partners will help extend our quality shopper base, who have high spending power,” she said.
About 30% of visitors at all Siam Piwat’s shopping complexes are foreign tourists from South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. With the extension of global partnerships, the company hopes a bigger contribution from foreign tourists in the near future.
“Today’s shoppers do not only come to our stores for shopping but also want the ultimate shopping experience with unrivalled privileges,” Ms Chanisa said.
Yoko Nakata, the operation manager for overseas business department at Parco Co, the operator of Parco department stores in Japan, said the collaboration with Siam Piwat for three years has seen the number of Thai visitors at Parco department stores gradually increase.
Parco has business ties with Siam Piwat for five locations that are popular among Thais including Sapporo, Tokyo and Sendi, and is considering extending its collaboration to Parco department store in other locations.
Siriphen Intuputi, Siam Piwat’s senior deputy managing director for advertising and public relations, said the company plans to spend at least 1 billion baht to strengthen its IT system for online shopping this year.
The company has also invested over 60 million baht in the launch of e-magazine named “SSPATIAL”, which is aimed at providing information and news as well as special promotions.