Shopping is like breathing to us all. We love to spend money. We have to spend money. On essential items like food, clothes, utilities and other more luxurious items like bags, jewelry and prissy non-essentials.
Since the dawn of the wheel and barter and trade we humans have become one with exchanging goods for money. It was when I was wandering through the Ion shopping mall on Orchard Road on Sunday when I started thinking about how technology had its special effects on how shopping malls function.
It’s not just the touch screen directories that allow you to navigate your way through the mall to make the shopping experience more convenient and enjoyable. Look at the back end Point of Sale systems that are setup in each Retail store – tracking sales and centralizing the accounts so the Mall can take its desired commission from sales.
The Ion happens to also have a huge outdoor billboard that advertises the malls brands, products and services to the masses. Blasting our commercials and awareness to consumers.
Location based sms messages are also a handy media campaign to create consumer purchases – whereby consumers are sent txt messages with discount offerings based on the signal sent from their GPS enabled phones.
Foot traffic is monitored for every consumer that walks in and out of the multiple entrance so that marketers can calculate peak periods and when best to have events.
The ION even has its own iPhone App where consumers are encouraged to review and share their dining favorites, upload pictures of tasty meals and be informed of the latest dining offers. This goes hand in hand with the social media campaign on Facebook and twitter – not to mention the trusty email mailing list.
They even provide complimentary cellphone charging for shoppers. In case you get lost and run out of power while you are trying to escape the maze and windowless labyrinth that is the ION.
The megalith that is the ION is a living and breathing monster a shopper’s paradise or a shopper’s peril.
Devon Wong
Clifford Wong
