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CO-OP MARKETING

Retail expert Joel R. Evans chuckled as he described a recent tour of a bustling new power center in Morgantown, W.Va., that is anchored by such hot big-box stores as Best Buy, SuperTarget and Waldenbooks.

Its entrance sign bears the ever-popular words Town Centre, he says, but the center’s resemblance to quaint American downtowns ends right there.

“It is a nice center,” said Evans, a Hofstra University business professor and co-author of Retail Management: A Strategic Approach. “But the driveways for almost every store in the parking lot are a separate walk from one another. Even though Best Buy might be 100 or 200 yards away from Target, you actually have to get in your car to go back and forth. The developer doesn’t even expect people to walk back and forth between the stores.”

Evans sees little point in retailers’ contributing to a cooperative-marketing budget at properties driven wholly by tenant mix and convenience rather than a “sense of place.” In such cases, landlords might as well focus on such tenant concerns as eliminating vacancies and providing highly visible security, he says.

The rise of the discounters and the growing focus on convenience continues to put tremendous pressure on retailers to slash their costs and prices, says Evans. As a result, many prefer to get the word out themselves about their sales and brand.

But the owners of regional malls, lifestyle centers or power centers with significant entertainment components (that is, properties with a legitimate claim to offering a sense of place) may run a risk if they allow retailers to take the marketing driver’s seat.

“There may be a price to pay if we have a slump,” said Judi A. Lapin, president of Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Lapin Consulting Group. “It is a very expensive proposition to try to regain top-of-mind awareness with consumers once you have lost that.”

— JG