The Future Mall Experience

The Experience

You step into a mall and an application on your Smart Watch instantly asks whether you are interested in Shopping, Entertainment or Dining. You indicate that you are interested in all three. The application alerts you to suitable apparel and accessories that suit your style (as well as size) available within your shopping budget within the mall, indicating the shops where they are on sale. The application also informs you about other household or novelty items on special discounts at outlets within the building that you may wish to consider. As for dining, the application lists the various F&B outlets with menus that suit your dietary requirements and tastes (vegetarian for example). It also lists the movie timings for shows at the cinema and gives you an idea of the availability of seats as well as the hottest new games at the arcade.

You decide to head for a shop to buy a pair of jeans based on the information that the application has furnished you with. As you make payment for the pair of jeans with your Smart Watch, the application pops up recommendations for a pair of shoes available at a shop right across and a shirt right next door that will go well with your latest purchase. You decide to skip the shoes but are tempted to check out the shirt. The application is right. The shirt does go well with that new pair of jeans. You buy it. As you make payment, the application makes further recommendations, but this time you decide to skip them because you are done shopping for the day.

As you walk out of the shop you run into an old friend. You decide to sit down for a cup of coffee and the application on your Smart Watch recommends just the place that fits both your tastes. You order your drinks as you walk over. You don’t have to queue. When you get there, you sit at a table and the drinks come to you delivered by automated quadcopters. The application on your watch suggests desserts to go with your hot beverage. You decline. Half an hour later you are still engrossed in your conversation and you receive an offer on your Smart Watch for a discounted refill on your drink. You along with your friend decide to take up the offer and the quadcopter flies to your table to replace the empty cups with full ones. Once again, you get suggestions on your watch for desserts to go with your drinks. This time you decide that you have worked up an appetite and indicate your choice; a cheesecake. You are promptly served.

When you leave the café, the application on your Smart Watch asks what you’d like to do next. You indicate you wish to leave and that you’ll need a cab. Another application pops open with a list of cabs closest to your location from across the range of taxi companies operating in the city. You book the closest one, regardless the company. You say bye to your friend and walk out of the mall to find the cab waiting for you. As you get into the cab you receive an alert on your application indicating when new discount sales or stock items are going to be arriving at various shops within the mall that you may look forward to. You note something of interest and set a reminder on your application to plan your next visit to the mall.

The Technology

Technology today allows the accumulation of virtually unlimited data. On one hand, a system stores the data on the consumer’s tastes, needs and preferences. On the other, a system can store the data on what the seller has available for the consumer. The two sets of data can be leveraged upon to create matches between that which is available and that which is desired. And this can be automated.

The future of technology is in integration, both of data and of function. A mall operator can integrate information from all its occupants whether F&B outlets, product outlets or recreational/entertainment outlets, to match with an incoming consumer’s needs, to tailor the experience. The GPS system integrated with sensor and database systems ensure effective timely interaction with the consumer, to ensure that upon getting to that store, the recommended good is still available rather than having been sold out. The integration of the Smart Application with automatic quadcopter drones serving orders at the café ensures that the customer gets what the customer wants, based on what is available.

Effectively, the technology will raise efficiency. An outdoor poster ad may hardly be viewed by the majority of prospective customers walking right by it, engrossed in perhaps other worldly distractions. A directed message will likely draw the consumer into a transaction over an item that he or she may not otherwise think of. He or she, may not even otherwise bother to look for the particular shop, remaining perhaps oblivious even to its existence. A consumer that may well just take a stroll as a window shopper and leave empty handed, is guided to the sale point, with the help of the Smart Interaction enabled by the technology. This gives the seller an opportunity to more directly influence a buy decision in a precisely targeted manner.

The Mind-set

Neighbours do not compete. They collaborate. That is how one shop gets to sell a shirt to go with a pair of jeans bought from another at the same mall. It is in the mall operator’s interest to ensure every one of its occupants runs profitably to ensure continued lease or rental income. It is in the interest of each individual outlet to see maximisation of opportunity for sale. If a shared interactive platform delivers that, then it isn’t a bad idea. What is also a good idea, is for the consumer to have as many options available at the mall as possible, to remain favourable, ensuring repeat visits and thus increasing possibility of engagement with that consumer (leading to transaction potentially). In other words, you want your neighbours to sell too, and succeed.

The same goes for “competing” cab companies. If they avail the GPS data of their cabs’ movements to application service provider, they increase the chances of bookings they get through the application, which they would otherwise lose out upon if they would desist from competing on such a platform with the other operators. For their own profit interests, they will have to ultimately collaborate to deliver the convenience to the consumer that technology can offer.

In the end

The future of out-of-home marketing certainly is promising to be more effective, than competing for poster or banner space.

This article was originally written by Harish Shah for, and is featured in, the Jul-Sep 2015 issue of The Singapore Marketer, a marketing trade magazine in Singapore published by the Marketing Institute of Singapore.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting include Strategic Foresight, Marketing and Branding.