Across China’s malls, the ring of cash registers and the crinkle of plastic shopping bags is being replaced with the clatter of ball pits – but will new playgrounds soon choke the country’s shopping centres?
As online shopping continues to cannibalise their bricks-and-mortar colleagues’ sales and competition grows among a surging mall sector, analysts say many leasing agents are turning to entertainment as a way to fill space and reel in customers.
“It kind of manifests itself in two streams — one, you see existing properties which are struggling to adapt to e-commerce who are trying to retrofit themselves or patch holes in their vacancies,” JLL senior manager of Research Warner Brown said.
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“Then you have new properties that are planning themselves from the ground up... I can think of an actual mall in Hunan province who are going to have theme-park style attractions.”
From inflatable slides to huge ball pits, along with childcare centres and even English-language schools, an appeal to children is seen as the panacea for China’s flagging malls.
JLL North China head of Research Steven McCord said it is a move which makes sense for the sector – not only can they capitalise on parents and grandparents lavishing money on children, but they can also increase the amount of time spent in malls.
“You might get them for lunch and dinner and they might just make some impulse purchases along the way at one of those expensive boutique malls,” he said.
The new strategy comes as unsold new homes in China jumped 11.2 per cent in 2015, according to new data released on Tuesday, rising to an enormous 452.5 million square metres.
