A study of critical success factors of specialized shopping centres in Hong Kong : the case study of K11

Abstract

Over the years, Hong Kong has become one of the most popular cities for tourism in the world partly due to the burst out of many successful shopping centres in the past decade. This new era of shopping centre experience has been emerged by the construction of large shopping centres with “Specialized' theme. In view of the keen competition in the market, it is essential for the Shopping Centre Managers and operators to realize the critical factors leading to the success of the “Specialized Shopping Centres”. In order to upkeep the quality standard and sustain the market competitiveness, it is crucial to identify and evaluate the critical success factors of the shopping malls. In recent years, there are various numbers of newly built shopping malls in the core business districts with similar trade mix and design. Hence, with an aim to stand out from these shopping malls, it is critical to create a special theme for a shopping mall so as to attract more customers to visit the mall with an intention which result to the burst of “Specialized Shopping Centre” in Hong Kong. This paper is aimed to study the critical success factors of Specialized Shopping Centres in Hong Kong, and K11 has been used as our study for such evaluation. Based on the Literature Review of “Central Place Theory” and “Homogeneous Retailer Agglomeration” we have a better understanding on the reasons why the competitors selling similar products would like to gather together in a specific location. Retail agglomeration, refers to both the heterogeneous and homogeneous type of retailers, could be best explained by the central place theory and the principle of minimum differentiation respectively. Both the significance and criticism by theorists were discussed for comparison and analysis. The Research Study has been carried out via questionnaires and telephone interviews on a particular sample in the vicinity. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used for the study. After the data analysis on the findings, the result of the research study has been discussed and analyzed so as to identify the critical successful factors for the Specialized Shopping Centre. The case study of K11 has been used for discussion and analysis in the following chapters. According to the result of the questionnaires through data analysis, five critical factors have been identified and examined as the key success factors of the specialized shopping Centres. In particular, the “promotion and marketing strategy” was viewed as one of the dominant factors in the case study of “K11 Art Mall”. Hence, further recommendations would also be proposed and discussed in the last Chapters. The recommendations are crucial to assist the Shopping Centre managers to design and develop new Shopping Centres with the right tenant mix and trade mix for their new developments. As a conclusion, the findings would help to provide a new horizon for developers and operators to design and build a successful specialized shopping Centre so as to sustain the market competitiveness of the shopping malls in view of the keen competition in this vibrant city.