You find a sit-out area and think you may as well spend the rest of the day there. You feel relaxed and comfortable and you have not even bought anything yet, but you are itching to look at what is on offer.

You enter one shop, then another, until after an hour or so you are loaded up with shopping bags. You may be surprised that you bought so many things, but the people tasked with marketing the mall are not. They expected you to act the way you did and your actions were guided from the start.

'To get people to buy goods you have to provide them with the luxury of space and time so that they don't feel guilty if they don't buy anything,' said Betty Leong Sin-ling, chief retail development manager at MTR Property Management.

'There are malls in Hong Kong that are crammed with shops and people. Those people in that type of mall feel that they must buy something. If they don't buy anything they will feel guilty about going there and wasting time.'

Studies show that there are better ways of making people shop than crowding them into an area crammed with shops. Ms Leong said that people spent more when impulse shopping than during planned shopping trips, and a relaxing environment encouraged impulse shopping.

'When consumers go into a mall that has a laid-back atmosphere they tend to be off-guard and are more likely to make spontaneous decisions,' she said. 'They enter the mall with no particular thoughts about buying anything and end up spending much more than they expected.'

She said Hong Kong needed more shopping alternatives. People yearned for new places to hang out other than their homes or offices. They were looking for a 'third' place - one where there was a sense of community; a place where everyone could connect with each other. A successful mall was one that could attract people who could identify with it. They would think that it was 'their' mall, she said.

Malls played a unique role in community building, especially in Hong Kong where everyone shopped, Ms Leong said.

'People no longer pay for only the product. They pay for the overall shopping experience. They want to introduce a particular mall to people and tell them of their shopping experience there. They want to be seen shopping in that mall. It is a part of their life.'

Ms Leong said people's shopping behaviour had changed a lot in recent years. Before the 1980s, people shopped in department stores. It was a no-frills kind of shopping. The stores sold highly diversified products to serve as many consumers as they could. People went into the store, got the products they needed and left. It was not a place to hang out.

'Consumers have become more sophisticated,' she said. 'People are well travelled and more exposed to various things. They ask for more.'

Malls have changed accordingly. Those that opened in the past 10 years, such as Festival Walk, IFC Mall and APM, had a unique character. The location, the building, shops and even promotional events helped build the malls' identities and attract different groups of consumers.

'A well-designed mall should attract consumers before they even decide what they want to buy,' Ms Leong said.

'We know what consumers need because we are all professional shoppers. We want them to go into our malls and think, 'this is exactly what I want'.'

Elements, which will be the MTR's flagship retail property in West Kowloon, was designed to appeal to all types of consumer.

The retail property will have a shopping and dining area of 1 million sqft, 700,000 sqft of landscaped gardens and it has been designed to bring a new shopping experience to Hong Kong.

'Elements will not be just another mall. Elements will revolutionise what we now see as mall culture and set new standards in retail trends and practices. Elements will be like a breath of fresh air. An urban oasis.'

Elements is set to open in October.