The Mall Group uses digital technology both on- and offline

The Mall Group says it is enhancing the shopping experience with digital technologies, both on- and offline, with the aim to become a leader in multi-channel sales. 

The company aims that within three years, it will be bringing in Bt500 million in revenue annually from online shopping. That is around 1 per cent of the Bt55 billion it expects this year.

The group operates The Mall outlets, The Emporium, and Siam Paragon. Natsamon Vongkittipat, its senior deputy managing director for corporate business development, said it considered digital technology to be an important marketing tool. 

The company’s digital business plan consists of two parts: online business and in-store digital marketing. 

 

MGlobeMall.com

For online business, the company has invested about Bt100 million to set up the “MGlobeMall”. It expects this channel to generate Bt500 million in additional annual revenue within three years. 

The Mall Group actually launched a form of online shopping three years ago, but this is the first significant year for MGlobeMall.com as it recently launched the MShop service. 

“Earlier at MGlobeMall.com, we offered discount coupons that our customers and those of our partners [shops in its malls] to download and use in the shops. We learned our customers’ online behaviour and collected a customer database. Now, we are ready to move forward to offer online shopping,” Natsamon said.

At the online shopping centre, there are 11 categories of selected products available. Customers can have their purchases delivered to their homes or to pick them up at any branch of The Mall. 

“To shop online, customers are required to sign in as members to let us know them and service them. Now we have more than 100,000 members shopping online. To keep them with us, we also provide MGlobeMall points for their online purchases. It is similar to the M Card points we offer for offline purchases. Currently, there are almost 3 million M Card members,” she said.

MGlobeMall.com is designed to help The Mall Group reach the so-called Generation C (short for “connected”) who spend a lot of time online and prefer to do make purchases online rather than go to a shopping centre. 

“This Generation C group is not small. It includes a wide range of ages of people who have the same behaviour of being connected,” Natsamon said.

She said MGlobeMall.com had a strategy of being selective in what products it offers because the behaviour of online shoppers is different from offline shoppers. They do not like to wade through huge piles of information to seek products, so the right products for them need to be selected. Therefore, customer insight is very important.

 

Beacon technology 

Apart from online shopping, The Mall Group also uses digital technology to enhancing customers’ offline shopping experience. 

Ratchada Luewetwanit, the group’s assistant general manager for digital marketing and new-market analysis, said the firm had been implementing “beacon technology” since September after spending six months studying it. 

She said beacon technology was a type of a low-cost, micro-location-based technology that uses Bluetooth to communicate with beacon hot spots installed at shopping centres that can connect with smartphones with “The Mall Group App”.

These hot spots deliver “marketing messages”, which may be about discounts or promotions, to customers who have the app on their smartphones and are walking through that area of the mall. Normally, one beacon hot spot has a coverage radius of 10 metres. She said there were 50 beacon hotspots installed at The Mall Bangkrapi, where the trial run took place before expanding to other sites. 

“We like to trial new digital marketing tools before moving forward to full deployment. We are also studying other new marketing technologies. Technologies and innovations are changing fast, so we have to stay tuned to study them before picking them as our tools,” Ratchada said.

She added that during the early days of the beacon-technology trial, about 500 customers redeemed the promotional offers every day. Around 70 per cent of them were able to redeem the offers themselves without needing assistance. 

“It let us know how customers in the digital era are familiar with the technology and how we can improve our digital marketing tools as well as campaigns to serve them effectively,” she said.

She said The Mall Group was continuing to invest in new digital technologies to enhance customers’ in-store shopping experience. It recently implemented an interactive directory at The Mall Bangkrapi. The directory not only displays the floor plan but can interact with shoppers. For example, it can show where a particular shop is and how to get there. It also displays marketing promotions. Importantly, it also allows customers to redeem their M Card points at the machine instantly. 

“We plan to implement this kind of machine at other sites as well as planning to increase the features on the machines,” Ratchada said.