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2009 to bring fall in number of customers of shopping malls

Starting next year, the financial crisis will make itself felt also in the Romanian retail market. Owners of trade centers admit that 2009 will bring a significant fall in the number of their customers, writes daily Adevarul, in its Expert Imobiliar (Real Estate Expert) supplement.

Even during times of crisis, one in two dwellers of Bucharest is going on a weekly basis to a modern shopping center, of the five launched in the past ten years. Each day, an average of 140,000 people are going to a shopping mall in Bucharest.

Marilena Branzan, marketing head of Anchor Group, a company holding two shopping centers in Bucharest, Bucharest Mall and Plaza Romania, said that traffic in malls increases a lot during weekends and holidays.

At the end of the week, each of the two shopping malls receives between 38 and 40 thousand potential buyers daily, and on weekends, they are visited by 43-48 thousand Bucharesters. On the average, the shopping malls in the districts of Drumul Taberei and Vitan benefit from a traffic of 30-35 thousand people.

But this Dec seems to be the last period when the stores in shopping malls will have many visitors and satisfying sales.

Even though a fall in the traffic in shopping malls has not been felt so far, with the winter holidays drawing near, after the New Year, the number of visitors will decrease a lot, specialists are saying.

'Starting next Jan, the shopping malls will receive by around 20 percent less visitors, ' said Ali Ergun Ergen, CEO Baneasa Shopping City.

Liviu Voinea, executive manager of the Group of Applied Economics, said that a sudden change in income expectations takes place at the level of consumers, which will lead to a drop in the number of consumers. Moreover, Romanians will choose cheaper products. So, the value of the shopping basket will be lower, on the average, at the beginning of 2009, Voinea also said.

Retailers present in shopping centers will report incomes falling by at least 20 percent, compared with the current year, Ergen said. Not only the number of consumers will go down, but shopping will also decrease in value in the coming months.

 

Sursa: http://www.rompress.ro

Tags: shopping malls number

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