How to Do Shopping Centre Surveys

When it comes to optimising your tenant mix and the performance of a retail property, the process of undertaking a shopping centre survey is fundamental to the making the right decisions into the future.  Your leasing program and tenant mix strategy should be built around the results of the survey.

Every 6 months!

Every good shopping centre should be surveyed each 6 month period to ensure that the shopping patterns are being optimised and the shopper is satisfied with the offering of the tenants.  As the years progress in the management of the property, you can shift the two survey months by one calendar month in each year.  Over the period of 6 years you will then get a broad survey of the entire shopping year.

Simplicity?

A shopping centre survey can be either specific and simple, or comprehensive and detailed; it really is subject to the requirements of the landlord and the property manager.  The problem with a detailed survey is that many shoppers will not want to participate in anything that takes too much time out of their visit to the property.  When in doubt, err on the side of simplicity.  A 3 or 4 minute survey is a good average.

Prize?

To help with shopper participation in the survey you can offer some free entry into a competition.  The prize can be of some value and attraction to help research people sell the survey.
In preparing for the survey, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you already have an earlier survey from which to work as a base?
2. Has the local community changed since the last survey?
3. Has the local economy changed since the last survey?
4. Has the tenant mix changed since the last survey?
5. What are the best times to do the survey given the shopping patterns of the community?

These questions will help you to make choices in just how the survey will be undertaken.  They will help you with the factors of content in the survey, and time to complete or collate.

Get Tenants Involved!

Involve the tenants in the shopping centre survey creation as they will very likely know the sentiments and needs of the shopper better than the landlord or the property manager.  They will likely give you some very relevant questions to apply to the survey.

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