Shopping Malls: Building A Social Connect

COVID has accelerated technology transformations in retail, but that’s not all. The pandemic has changed the facets of retail across segments, markets, channels and shopping malls too. Today malls are no more just a place to shop, but they have turned into ‘social spaces’.

-  Anurima Das

From vaccination drives to virtual celebration of prominent days like women’s day, Earth Day to running exciting offers and much more, shopping malls today are getting more recognised for their social initiatives. With the pandemic and the malls being shut for the larger part of last year and this year, these social ways of staying in touch with the customer earmarks the birth of a new era in retail.

“We have seen very early recovery this time, and have been getting quiet good footfalls. It may be also due to continuous vaccination drives which have boosted confidence in consumers to step out for their shopping needs. We are almost about to reach at the levels of pre pandemic in terms of both sales and footfalls within 45 days of reopening of the malls. There has been increased cost towards facilities demanded in this post- COVID era especially towards the regular sanitisation of the mall and new technical evolution of system equipment’s to enable contactless experience for consumer as much as possible from parking to food ordering, touch free mechanism is integrated in order to maintain complete hygiene,” Abhishek Bansal, Executive Director, Pacific Group mentions.

Making Malls Safe