Picking the best of numerous mall hats

The fast paced and frenetic work/life mix that is so engrained in our daily lives in the Middle East has recently led me to believe that I have a vital piece of furniture missing in my office - a hat stand. Let me explain.

My work schedule and professional capacity is such that I mainly try and describe myself, and line of work as that of a market advisor. The result is that we typically offer market advice and advisory services, predominantly substantiated by in-house research to the broader retail industry throughout the region. The business as a whole however has various sector interfaces and because of the diverse inter-relationship of the real estate industry, it is immensely difficult to pigeon-hole our work capacities.

The result is such that because of this constant business diversity, I often feel that there is an element of surprise to what could normally be considered the daily grind and this is what keeps us all ticking along and ultimately what creates such a culturally and economically diverse sector. Hence, it is this diversity that often requires me to don various 'work hats' throughout the day and hence the comment on the possible adjunct to my office furnishings. There is a bigger point here though and it is one that concerns us all.

Let us consider the hat stand as an analogy for the retail sector, with lots of pegs for lots of retail hats, where the hats are then the malls. Suddenly then we have many options from which to choose and the only decision we as customers have to make is which retail 'hat' to wear -or in more simple terms which mall to visit and why. The more malls that open in the market means that there is more choice for us as consumers, with the result being that we are led to make more informed decisions about where to visit, based on the increasing levels of choice

Informed choice

Here, however, is the issue, to make the correct choice almost always means that we have to make an informed choice, a choice that is steeped in a certain amount of knowledge and one that by definition excludes many options in preference of a few. The problem that we are faced with as consumers however is that more often than not we are creatures of habit, and typically make decisions based on what we like, more than necessarily making those decisions based on what it is that we actually want.

As such, mall visits and the motives behind those visits are not necessarily governed by the actual reason or need for visiting, but much more by our subconscious thought connectivity to what it is that we like about the mall in question. Once again therefore we are back to the matter of choice and the process by which we make our decisions.

The 'hats' that I intermittently wear for work are not decisions based on choices that I have available to me at the time, as my work situation at the time tends to dictate this. However, as mall visitors, we are making a conscious decision to go to the mall and hence also have the ability to make the choice about our final destination.

With more and more malls entering the market, the decision-making process on which mall to visit could become based less on choosing the right 'hat', and more about choosing the one that offers the easiest solution, such as closest, biggest or best. These motives are the very basis of our current mall footfall dynamics. However, as the market quickly looks to absorb many new malls, these patterns could shift over time along with the change in the consumers' decision-making process.

The writer is head of GRMC Retail Services, Dubai.