Real Estate Owner Data Analytics

• Mall owners are using data analytics to better understand consumer behavior and traffic in their locations.
• A study by McKinsey noted that mall operators who use data analytics to optimize their property layout, select tenants, and optimize their rent levels, have seen revenues increase by 20%.
• At the same time, retailers within the malls are looking to use predictive analytics to drive customer conversion.
•  Mobile devices are driving much of the data collection for both retailers and customers.
• Some recent technologies used by mall owners include GroundTruth, a location-based marketing platform, which helps mall owners understand visitor profiles, and improve targeting and marketing activities, and ShopperTrak, which helps identify the number of shoppers and the daily traffic flow to predict future trends. RetailFlux identifies how consumers navigate within the mall and provides mall owners with information to encourage shoppers to move to lesser-utilized areas of the property.
• While these technologies are becoming a more critical means of helping mall owners understand their customers, this information is also quite helpful to current retailers or future tenants, helping them boost customer conversion and turnover.

Benefits of Mall Owner Data For Tenant Retailers

• With mall owners increasingly adopting data analytics to improve their own performance, retail tenants benefit from these data-driven decisions. When mall owners monitor and optimize traffic within their properties, retail tenants are better able to understand peak traffic times and shopper behavior within their own stores.
• As malls become more event-driven, property owners also have the opportunity to measure traffic for these events, and evaluate their ROI to benchmark their success, justifying their rents.
• Other uses for mall owner data analytics include sharing traffic patterns with retailers to help them optimize their employee schedules, understand timing of high-profile events to optimize advertising and promotion campaigns, and determine how best to merchandise and display their product offerings.

Retailer and Landlord Data Sharing

• Mall owners and retailers are using technology, including WiFi and beacons to collect consumer behavioral data, including driving distance to and from malls, visit frequency, what consumers are buying and spending patterns. Retailers are now more likely to share this information with property owners, in an effort to stay competitive in today's retail environment, which includes online retailers, such as Amazon.
•  NewMark Merrill is currently testing more than 15 Proptech technologies, and already uses multiple technologies to monitor visits, track social media sentiment about their retailers, and understand the demographic profile of their customers. The property owner can support their retailers with this learning by helping them understand their customers, provide enhanced security, and offer support in terms of marketing or operational issues based on customers' specfic retailer experience.
•  Thor Equities, a property management leader, including shopping venues, is leveraging a custom mobile application to provide an optimized tenant experience, including helping tenants control lighting and temperature, improve scheduling, and receive emergency notifications.

PropTech Firms and Technology

• As retailers and property owners become more data-driven, collaboration has increased between them, giving rise to the Proptech industry, which offers technology and data analytics to benefit both realtor and lessee.
•  OneMarket, a Westfield property-owner spinoff, offers technology solutions to provide brick-and-mortar retailers a competitive advantage via tools, such as their live receipt technology, which helps track on and offline consumer shopping patterns and trends. This technology improves the competitiveness of retailers within a mall operation, thereby improving the performance of the mall property itself.
• CBL properties conducted a pilot program in which it leveraged optical sensors to obtain shopper demographic data, which helped 2 national retailers adjust its product mix and window displays.

Summary of Our Early Findings Relevant To The Goals

• In this first hour of research, we were able to find information regarding the benefits of using data-driven technologies and analytics for both mall property owners and retailers within these properties. Information suggested that data-driven collaboration between owners and retailers has increased, based on the need for brick-and-mortar stores and properties to compete against online retailers.
• While we found some examples of technologies used by mall owners and retailers to improve their performance, we did not find any direct examples or case studies of two-way data sharing between the 2 parties, though our research suggests that data collected is used to benefit both mall operators and retailers.
• Our recommended next steps consider the information we were able to find in this first our of research.