The Shopping Centre as a Brand

In the context of shopping centres, the terms ‘image’ or ‘attractiveness’ tend to be more used than ‘branding’. In this chapter, it is argued that techniques of measuring brand image and building brand value can help towards customer satisfaction and commercial success for shopping centres. The concept of ‘branding’ is well known for consumer products. Successful manufacturers have built up brand value through the development of a differentiated brand personality and a long-term reputation for quality backed up by advertising and other forms of brand support. Concentration in retailing has led to the balance of marketing ‘power’ shifting towards retailers, whose brand equity has overtaken that of even leading manufacturers (McGoldrick, 2002). Jary and Wileman (1998) questioned whether retail businesses are really brands. They concluded that retail brands are ‘The Real Thing’ although differing from product brands ‘not least because of the difficulty of managing the multiplicity of attributes of a retail brand’. The larger retailers are building their brands — for example one study rated the leading multiple grocer Tesco in the top 10 (out of 115) major UK companies committed to building powerful brands (Brand Finance, 1999). Retailers have become more aware of the value of branding and have (according to Davies, 1998) attempted to copy the images of manufacturers’ brands in developing their own brands.