MegaBox
Running a
Shopping Mall 101 building
tenants
mall
customers
“From time to time we need to take care of the four aspects of a shopping mall— the building, the mall, the tenants, and the customers.”
Hong Kong Brand Series #07 Brought to you by the Department of Marketing, CUHK Business School CU: Prof. Leo Sin, Dr. Susanna Kwok, Department of Marketing MB: Mr. Chu Ip Pui, Executive Director of Kerry Properties (Hong Kong) Limited (Click here for the full version at University Hall of Branding, Chinese version only)
Mr. Chu Ip Pui, Executive Director of Kerry Properties Credit: Ming Pao
H
ong Kong is truly a shopping paradise. Can you guess how many shopping malls there are in our fair city? Over 300! All these shopping malls total 40 million square feet of retail space, and grows by another two million square feet each year. Facing fierce competition from each other, shopping malls try their best to get customers to pay a visit. Unfortunately, MegaBox was launched with a huge disadvantage—its isolated location away from the MTR in the Kowloon Bay industrial area. Five years later, not only has it survived, but turns out to be thriving and popular in Kowloon East. What could we learn from MegaBox? Mr. Chu Ip Pui, Executive Director of Kerry Properties, is here to show you some of the basics in successfully running a shopping mall.
Built out of nothing CU: How did you decide to open a shopping mall here? MB: Owned by Kerry Properties Limited, the land had been vacant for many years before we met in 2001 to discuss what to build. It’s easier to build an office building. For leasing, office buildings generate longterm and stable revenues. However, we noted that there were already 11 million square feet of office