Shopping centres: the end of an era?

The permanent closure of the Manor stores at the Breggia Centre in Balerna and Centro Manor - now Centro La Rotonda - in Sant'Antonino appears to mark the end of an era, at a time when people are increasingly turning to online shopping and more. Carmine Garzia, Professor of Business Economics at the Faculty of Economics of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), commented on this phenomenon in the Corriere del Ticino.

Founded in the 1970s as retail shopping temples in which to marvel at the abundance of merchandise at hand, shopping centres are now experiencing a crisis, faced with competition from online platforms and neighbouring Italy, as well as dwindling customer purchasing power. It therefore appears that shopping centres have reached the end of an era, as illustrated by the permanent closure of the Manor stores at the Breggia Centre in Balerna and Centro Manor - now Centro La Rotonda - in Sant'Antonino, opened 50 and 17 years ago respectively. "I don't believe, however, that shopping centres will disappear," commented Carmine Garzia, Professor of Business Economics at the USI Faculty of Economics, when asked on the subject by Corriere del Ticino. "In my opinion they will continue to exist, but they will have to be shopping centres with a specific identity. They will have to find a particular focus that allows them to stand out from the offerings of online platforms and so remain attractive in the eyes of customers".

The so-called "dead malls" phenomenon - shopping centres that have been made redundant by competition, both physical and digital, and have ultimately been abandoned - appears to have reached Ticino as well. After all, for some time now our canton has had its own abandoned shopping centre, the Centro Ovale in Chiasso, which to a certain extent confirms the theory that shopping centres, if they want to succeed in a now saturated market, have to be able to stand out from the crowd. "I wouldn't say that there are too many shopping centres today," Professor Garzia continues. "However, there are perhaps too many indifferent shopping centres, which all offer more or less the same things. The shopping centres that have a future are those that can count on one or more 'anchor tenants', i.e. retailers with a wide appeal, or that can focus on a particular market. A centre like Mendrisio's FoxTown, which has its own identity, makes sense. Finally, even a more generalised shopping centre can stand out if it is located in a particularly attractive geographic position".

Customer proximity is an increasingly key factor. A recent study shows that the Swiss have more and more free time, but also feel increasingly stressed. As a result, there is a tendency to reduce the time spent on activities considered less interesting, which includes shopping. "Consumers lose interest in going to a shopping centre to buy products that they can find more conveniently on online platforms. The shopping centre must therefore reinvent itself by focusing on a specific offering, or by providing experiences that go beyond shopping," Carmine Garzia concludes.

The full interview with Carmine Garzia, published in Corriere del Ticino, is available at the following link.