Fright nights and blind dates: China’s malls put on a new face to combat online shopping
Brick-and-mortar malls mount shopping experience to fight for business with online shopping
At the Joy City Chaoyang mall in Beijing, a haunted house looms near the entrance. For those shoppers brave enough to try, they must negotiate five separate mazes taking about 40 minutes, where professional actors play out the characters of South Korea’s hit horror comic Beauty Water.
Welcome to the new shopping experience in China, brick-and-mortar style.
As e-commerce upends retailing in the world’s most populous consumer market, China’s malls are reinventing the shopping experience to retain customers and survive the onslaught.
There are 4,600 malls in China, with the number likely to more than double to 10,000 by 2025, according to an estimate by Deloitte.
While retail sales have held steady, China’s online shopping has been booming, growing 33 per cent in 2015 on track to reach US$1 trillion this year, according to Ecommerce Europe.