The Mall Group Co, one of the country's leading department store chains, has set an offensive marketing strategy that includes the launch of a full-scale online platform and becoming a food destination to cope with fiercer anticipated retail competition next year.
Voralak Tulaphorn, the company's chief marketing officer, said the company is developing the online platform to complete the shopping experience for customers.
The Mall expects to be able to provide this service to shoppers by the last quarter of next year.
"We have yet to be affected by online shopping as we have not heavily expanded our business upcountry," she said.
Ms Voralak cited information from Lazada that about 70% of online shoppers live upcountry, with Bangkok residents making up some 30% of the total.
The Mall is also working to become more of a food destination.
Some 30-40% of tenants at retail stores under the Mall Group are restaurants, compared with 10- 20% in the past five years.
According to the company's in-house research, the prime reason people visit The Mall complexes has become food, moving away from shopping as in the past.
"Customers still enjoy eating out at a retail complex. For those who prefer to eat at home, we provide home delivery via collaborations with partners," she said.
The Mall and its network of stores have myriad strategies to encourage shoppers to spend more time at its malls next year.
The strategies include more marketing events, notably for food, and an increase of permanent food stores for younger shoppers at each branch, along with food pop-up stores.
"We will put more emphasis on the customer experience by arranging food events at all The Mall branches every month," said Ms Voralak. "All events are expected to extend the time spent at malls by shoppers, rising to 2½ hours from 1½ hours."
At the same time, the company is planning to renovate existing shopping complexes next year, including the BluePort project in Hua Hin, where traffic is quite low.
"Hua Hin boomed in the past five years, but the overall market is slowing down, particularly for tourists," she said.
The company is considering adding new anchors such as co-working spaces to draw locals to visit, said Ms Voralak.
The Mall expects to allocate at least 2 billion baht to its marketing budget next year. By doing so, the company expects sales to reach 60 billion baht in 2019, up from an estimated 58 billion this year.
She said the company is allocating 350 million baht for its New Year campaign from Nov 15 to Jan 15. It expects sales of 7 billion baht from the 62-day event.