Another glut of construction of malls has been observed in Ukraine since 2017. For example, total area of all malls in Kyiv city will be extended almost twice as large: up to 2 mln. sq. m. over the next two years.
The information on the plans of construction of new malls (Alfa Mall, “Kubometer-2”, “Appolo-2”) disseminates with ever increasing frequency in Dnipro. Moreover, the already-existing malls head for area extension “Dafi”, “Materik” /NEO PLAZA).
Such a phenomenon is an answer to growing demand. Malls now take pride of place in life of people due to increase in the amount of time spent here.
What the malls of the future will be able to offer to us? How will they look like? The most of the analysts point up the following keynotes:
1. Malls will offer the time spent rather than the product.
The entertainment component of the malls will be increased more and more.
The impression economics is the economic of the future for malls. So, the cinemas, bowling clubs or the rinks will become the anchor tenants with ever increasing frequency as compared to stores.
Moreover, the malls will be transformed into so-called lifestyle-centres in course of time. People will be able not only to go shopping and have fun, but also to study, to improve themselves and to work. So, it will be the multipurpose place where they may come and satisfy all their demands.
It is not unexpected that more and more space will be allotted for pastime. For example, all and everyone mall may provide the permanent area for interactive events execution in course of time: workshops, auctions, contests etc. It’s all for customer involvement.
2. Improvement of customer psychological comfort.
The rentable area may reduce in the ratio of total area of mall in the future. This is caused by the priority of customer psychological comfort created by open space. Crowds, narrow passages and queues mean the waste of time, so, the malls of the future shall have to do a good job for the reasonable space
allocation.
The developed mall navigation facilitates the customer comfort. The up-to-date malls install the interactive navigation systems even today. These systems help to map a route to certain point, to obtain the information on the store and contact data etc. And it will be impossible to imagine the mall without such innovations soon.
3. Change of proposed entertainment formats.
Developer Vadym Iermolaev from Dnipro city believes that the entertainment formats in malls may change or become more various. For example, the cyberarenas may appear everywhere in the malls. By the way, the “MOST-city” mall in Dnipro city, already has the cyberarena. It is planned to conduct the
final of the first Cybersport Championship of Ukraine here in October.
It is hardly possible to predict which entertainments will become popular over the next years, like it was impossible to foresee advent of the Internet in the last century.
One can only guess that new entertainments in the malls of the future will be related to robot automation, virtual and augmented reality technologies.
It means that the malls shall have to adapt to the new pace of life of people, new customer needs, as well as changes in customer behavior.