Evaluation of Decision Theoretic Approach

Introduction

The business organizations have revolutionized business operations to maximize customer satisfaction by diversifying goods and service. A mall is defined as set of buildings having several units with pathways to enable easily access different units (Bloch, Ridgway and Dawson, p. 23). The shopping malls have certain features that attract people including having restaurants, stores and other businesses that serves general public (Yong-Man and Shim, p. 25) Shopping malls can also serve a major recreation centre where people meet to shop, make friends and engage in other recreation activities. Westfield Garden City is one of the major shopping centres in Brisbane having more than 400 stores hosting restaurants, retail shops, public library, cinema and many other service vendors (Goodman and Coiacetto, p. 253). The shopping mall has undergone tremendous changes since it construction in early 1970s however, the company is facing a number of threats as explained in the problem definition section below.

Background to the problem

The Australian businesses have changed in the past few years characterized by cropping of many shopping centres in the major cities (Voyce, p. 272).  With Brisbane being one of the major cities in the country, the number of malls are increasing significantly here. Westfield Garden City is one of the popular shopping mall in Queensland thus enjoying a daily high traffic of customers (Bailey, p. 1958). One can argue that the business success of this mall is attributed to quality of shopping experience offered by multiple business unit in the mall. Though there are a number of malls in Queensland including Robina Town Centre, Greek Road Carindale, Sunshine Plaza and Harbour Town among others, the high quality of spaces in Westfield Garden City has increased popularity of the said mall.

There is a problem of understanding underlying issues influencing success of shopping malls in Australia with Westfield Garden City being our case study. In previous studies, a number of dead malls have been reported in the US that are no longer in use (Parlette and Cowen, p 796) This study aims at providing framework to prevent emergence of dead malls in Australia by informing the said mall the underlying social and architectural issues that affect its performance. This would prevent collapse and receivership of the said mall. Though the said mall has high concentration of sellers and buyers, there is still opportunity to convert a large number of visitor into loyal customers.

The decline in business in premises in the mall over years can lead to disuse and consequently closure. There are a number of challenges facing Westfield Garden City like any other business including:

• How to constantly keep the cost down.
• How to ensure that the mall has enough parking lot for growing customers.
• How to boost sales for its tenants.
• How to cope with competition from the online shopping online.

Management decision

The background information provided earlier form basis management decision to deal with problem of exploring different factors to find how they will be applied in the mall to enhance customer experience.

Research questions

1. What is the context of Westfield Garden City and how does the said mall relate with its context?
2. How has the internal circulation of Westfield Garden City been resolved?
3. What are the major recreation activities and facilities offered in the said mall?
4. How is the parking of Westfield Garden City in relation to quality and quantity?

Objectives

1. To determine the response of Westfield Garden City to its context.
2. To study the internal circulation of Westfield Garden City.

In this digital era, many other players are offering most of the services to which malls are supposed to do. The rate at which shopping malls are being constructed in Queensland is quite fast. However, many of the cropping malls fail to understand how to have efficient service and product mix. Furthermore, the mall under study has few support facilities compared to malls cropping up in the same industry thus threatening its survival in the market share. Contrarily to current customer needs, the mall has to be reorganized to have more spaces for customer interaction and entertainment thus boosting customers’ experience enhancing their loyalty. This mall has to offer other entertainment facilities since people usually visit mall for many other reasons beyond shopping needs (Bohnenberger et al., p. 156). Customers require adequate space for walking and parking so as to stay long enough to experience what different stores in the mall has to offer.

References

Bailey, M., 2011. Bringing’the city to the suburbs’: regional shopping centre development in Sydney, 1957-1994.

Bloch, P.H., Ridgway, N.M. and Dawson, S.A., 1994. The shopping mall as consumer habitat. Journal of retailing, 70(1), pp.23-42.

Bohnenberger, T., Jameson, A., Krüger, A. and Butz, A., 2002, September. Location-aware shopping assistance: Evaluation of a decision-theoretic approach. In International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 155-169). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Goodman, R. and Coiacetto, E., 2012. Shopping streets or malls: Changes in retail form in Melbourne and Brisbane. Urban Policy and Research, 30(3), pp.251-273.

Parlette, V. and Cowen, D., 2011. Dead malls: Suburban activism, local spaces, global logistics. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(4), pp.794-811.

Voyce, M., 2006. Shopping malls in Australia: The end of public space and the rise of ‘consumerist citizenship’?. Journal of sociology, 42(3), pp.269-286.

Yong-Man, K. and Shim, K.Y., 2002. The influence of Internet shopping mall characteristics and user traits on purchase intent. Irish Marketing Review, 15(2), p.25-28