A Strategy For Retail Recovery In Shopping Precincts
1. Get The Timing Right – uniform trading hours that meet customer needs and reflect the surrounding environment e.g. population dominated by commuters.
2. Mix It Up – assemble businesses that compliment each other and provide an offer that meet the needs of customers. Maintain this rigorously so that if a key component closes it is quickly replaced. Meet ALL the needs of customers in one place.
3. Spruce Things Up – keep things clean, well maintained, and well lit.
4. Have A Plan – maintain a cohesive vision and strategy with reasonable expectations. A retail centre is not always just about retail.
5. Service With A Smile – This goes without saying. One bad customer experience can spoil a whole shopping trip. And we are talking about facilities here as well as inter-personal relationships.
The strategy above was written up this week in The Conversation which is a journal written with “academic rigour, and journalistic flair” usually by academics working with businesses and communities. This article was addressing the decline in UK High Streets where retailers have been struggling to maintain their relevance.
Their research observed that commentators often blame store closures on online shopping, and poor footfall on the weather, but they found a different problem and it related to High Streets maintaining a variety of services and a cohesiveness that met customer needs. In particular they found that local councils and businesses had not worked well together in coping with change.
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