Mall operators look for digital edge

Budgets for online marketing increase

Three major shopping mall operators — The Mall Group, Central Pattana (CPN) and Siam Piwat — have set out a number of strategies to lure shoppers during the rest of the year.

The various strategies include digital marketing and data analysis to attract shoppers amid fierce market competition.

The Mall Group and CPN will increase their digital marketing budgets between 20-50% in the second half as they gear up to target millennials.

Voralak Tulaporn, senior vice-president for marketing at The Mall Group, said it has five strategies to increase traffic at each of its malls by 15-20% this year. The five are online marketing, innovative customer relations management, collaboration with business allies, updating lifestyle trends via gurus, and events to upgrade the shopping experience.

The group recently set up a data mining team to analyse customer behaviour and shopping history data to tailor its promotions to target customer groups such as first-time workers, teenagers, young families and baby boomers.

The Mall Group will reduce the number of its new promotion campaigns by 40% the rest of the year, extending some campaigns that have a sales impact. The company’s marketing budget for events will be adjusted to include both local and international levels.

“Consumers did not respond much to People walk past a discount sign advertisement at a department store on Rama IV Road.

our promotion campaigns because they are familiar with similar offerings. We will put more focus on marketing events, which are an important weapon to lure customers to our stores,” Miss Voralak said.

The Mall Group has 3.5 million M Card members, about 50-60% of which are active. It expects to increase the proportion of active members to 80% over the

next three years. Active members shop once per month.

The group allocated 800 million baht for the marketing budget to lure visitors this year.

She said retail business growth in the first half is projected at 4-5%, with a second-half target of 4.6%.

Nattakit Tangpoonsinthana, executive vice-president for marketing at CPN, the property arm of Central Group, said the company will also put its focus on the digital approach.

Central has 7 million members for The 1 Card. CPN will use data from cardholders for deep consumer insights to figure out how to tailor sales approaches to suit them.

CPN expects it will allow cardholders to collect points with any purchase at its tenants’ stores at Central malls in the future.

“Central shopping complexes will be places for not only shopping but also destinations for lifestyle activities in the future,” Mr Nattakit said.

The company is investing 400 million baht on its marketing events this year to draw visitors to its complexes. It plans to join hands with its subsidiaries and business partners to launch the “Greatest Grand Sale 2017” campaign around mid-year to support the Tourism Authority of Thailand in promoting the country as a shopping and dining destination in Asia.

An executive at Siam Piwat Co, the operator of Siam Discovery and Siam Center, said the company is considering extending its global privilege partnership scheme to new retail partners in more countries to draw more foreign tourists to shop at its stores.

The partnership has operated for two years and the company got a good response from foreign tourists from several countries.

Tourists represent 30% of the visitors to Siam Piwat’s three shopping centres. The top nationalities for foreign tourists are South Korean, Chinese, Hong Kongers, Singaporean and Malaysian.

For the domestic market, the company’s core strategy remains to become an iconic lifestyle brand.

Siam Piwat has invested over 60 million baht to introduce SSpatial, its online magazine. The e-zine is the country’s first online retail magazine, catering to digitalage clientele, the source said.

“We want to be the top shopping centre operator, winning the hearts of both Thai and foreign consumers,” the source said.