Social Media Competitive Analysis for Shopping Malls in Singapore

Shopping Malls Social Media Marketing Landscape in Singapore

The key commercial benefit of a successful social media strategy is that it encourages word of mouth, shared between people who trust each other’s opinion and act on recommendations. Every retailer is on social media in one way or another, whether you have an active strategy in place or not. Consumers are constantly talking about brands on social platforms, recommending products, asking where to buy something, or posting a complaint.

For retailers, social media channels can bring huge opportunities to target consumers in unique and personalized ways. Research indicates that 46% of shoppers rely on social media when making a purchase.

Here’s a look at important trends in social media usage and 5 strategies that are adding up to big wins for retailers in 2016 and beyond.

1. Integrate Video Marketing into Social Channel
2. Retailers are adding more social e-commerce feature (paid online and enjoy offline) into their online to offline(O2O) strategies
3. Mobile-First: social is mobile, mobile is social
4.  Social Media influencer marketing is gaining momentum
5. Add social experiences to your physical locations
6. Online Gamification – moment of joy

At Hashmeta, with our experiences handling both city malls (town malls) and suburban malls (heartland malls) social media presence (Facebook and Instagram primarily), we did a full competitive analysis with a distinctive perspective on the current state of retail social media marketing.

Retail space in Singapore can generally be classified as public or private space. Public space would predominantly comprise of HDB-owned retail space, HDB shop units and properties owned by government agencies, while private space can be sub-categorised into the following categories:

(a) REIT-owned retail space such as Plaza Singapura, Northpoint;
(b) Property-fund-owned retail space1 such as Parkway Parade, Liang Court;
(c) Developer-owned retail space such as The Paragon, United Square, Wheelock Place; and
(d) Strata-titled retail space such as Queensway Shopping Centre, Thomson Plaza.

In this report, we will zoom into the private retail space/retail malls and group them (based on location) into two main category – City Malls and Suburban Malls. There are a total of 60 City Malls and 64 Suburban Malls.