Real estate experts say shopping centers must become community areas with full services if they want to survive.
Shopping on the Internet is convenient, but lacks community cohesion.
David Roberts, CEO of architecture firm Aedas, believes that in the next 20 years, users will find stores that sell books or DVDs on websites.
Major shopping center owners such as Land Securities, Intu, Westfield and Klepierre have increased the number of restaurants and cinemas to keep shoppers staying longer and offer more promotions for regular customers.
However, the above methods are not strong enough.
Robert believes shopping center owners need to borrow ideas from developing markets such as Dubai and China.
Christian Ulbrich, managing director of real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said stores are now getting bigger and looking like adventure parks to attract people’s attention.
While retailers and shopping center owners are struggling to find the right way to do business, they all agree that warehouse real estate owners are in for a treat.
For every 1 billion euro increase in online sales, average warehouse demand increased by about 72,000 square meters in the UK, Germany and France over the past five years, a report from Prologis said last year.
Simon Hope, team leader in the global fund market at real estate consulting firm Savills, said that changing consumer trends are affecting the way investors perceive real estate for logistics.
In fact, Norwegian and Chinese investment funds have recently poured money into the warehouse real estate segment.
Phuong Mai (According to Huffingtonpost)