Innovating The Shopping Mall Experience: The Mall-Sage Solution

Abstract

Stakeholders of the modern shopping mall industry are facing a critical challenge: competing against other malls to stay relevant and become the most appealing destination for customers. The most straight forward path to achieve this status is to provide its customers with exciting quality-of-life features such as ample parking, escalator access to all floors, diverse food options catering to a variety of budgets, and more. However, most malls have adopted these basic features over time, leaving little room for differentiation. As more malls incorporate these successful features, the pioneering mall's uniqueness and advantages dwindle. To stay competitive and aspire to the top, malls must constantly innovate by introducing new features. However, inventing entirely new and captivating services becomes increasingly challenging over time. The primary goal of this research is to investigate this situation and propose innovative, novel features that malls can implement to reclaim their position as industry leaders. This investigation makes an effort to study the latest trends using data from previous research articles, conducting surveys on focus groups, and gaining firsthand experience by visiting a few malls. This study will provide practical insights and recommendations for stakeholders, allowing them to not only maintain their relevance but also thrive in the ever-competitive landscape by shedding light on the evolving dynamics of mall features and consumer expectations. The final result of this research will be a web application Mall-Sage which implements the proposed features.