With warmer weather and school holidays just round the corner, Summer Shopping Centre Events is a golden opportunity to drive footfall and increase retail spend. By carefully planning engaging Summer family-friendly options, shopping centres can transform passive visits into memorable experiences that also encourage shoppers to spend more, stay longer, and return within the duration of Summer!
Why Summer Events Matter for Retail
There’s a psychological part where, when the sun is shining, people are happier and happier to spend money too. Summer therefore marks a critical period for retail to run different campaigns such for Summer half term, Summer holiday months, and back-to-school. With schools out and families looking for affordable entertainment, shopping centre become an attractive destination when free, interactive events are available. But to truly convert these increased traffic into sales, events must be strategically designed with retailers in mind, making thse Summer shopping centre events more than just fun, but also commercially effective.
Align Events with Retail Promotions
One of the most effective and easy ways to maximise spend is by ensuring your event activation ties into promotions from your tenants. For example, if you’re hosting a beach-themed event, work with fashion retailers to highlight Summer clothing or swimwear, offer exclusive discounts for participants (e.g. complete this Summer trail to get 10% off XYZ shops), creating a seamless customer journey from engagement to purchase.
Create Event Zones that Encourage Dwell Time
The longer a visitor stays, the more they are likely to spend. Designing Summer Shopping Centre Events with multiple activities such as arts and crafts, seating area, photo opportunities, live entertainment can help keep visitors on-site for extended periods. Placing these zones strategically throughout the centre and also encourage foot traffic past key retailers.
Incorporate Spend-to-Play Mechanics
Encourage customers to shop before they can play. One way to do this is by introducing a minimum spend system to access event spaces/ entertainment. This could be participating in a trail, spin the wheel, access to an event area that offers activities in exchange for a retail receipt, turning passive visitors into active spenders. This is a great way to incentivise purchasing, but also gives retailers a measurable link between the shopping centre event and their sales uplift.
Use Events to Capture Data
Running Summer Shopping Centre Events also presents an ideal opportunity to collect customer data for future marketing. Trail leaflets, competitions, or gamified experiences can be gated behind a simple sign-up form, allowing shopping centres to build their marketing database, as well as learning the demographics of their customers. Running Summer Shopping Centre Events also presents an ideal opportunity to collect customer data for future marketing. Competitions, digital treasure hunts, or gamified experiences can be gated behind a simple sign-up form, allowing centres to build their email or SMS marketing lists.
Encourage Social Sharing
Creating ‘instagrammable’ photo opportunities that visitors will want to share on social media is an easy way to gain online presences for the branding. This can be as simple as a backdrop, a branded character, or an overall-branded summer-themed installation, making your event social media worthy can significantly increase reach, visibility for the event as well as brand awareness to attract more visitors and in turn, spending.
Summer shopping centre events are more than just seasonal entertainment, they are a strategic tool to drive retail success. By combining immersive experiences with clear commercial goals, shopping centres can create events during these seasons to support retailers and overall spend. See our last blog for more shopping centre event ideas that have been proven to work and delivery measurable results in footfall and average spending. Contact us to learn more about our shopping centre event services.