The private security industry is tasked with protecting lives and property against an evolving array of personal and property threats. Rendering such services comes with many market related challenges for private security providers. These services are rendered to various types of clients like government departments, hospitals, universities and shopping malls amongst others. These clients have unique and different needs and expectations, therefore shopping malls as clients of the private security industry were selected for the purpose of this research. The qualitative research approach was used for this study wherein a questionnaire was used to obtain information from private security and shopping mall personnel working in shopping malls in Gauteng. The findings of this study reveals that there are indeed client retention challenges that are facing private security companies providing services to shopping malls. Based on the findings, recommendations for the private security providers and further research in shopping mall security management are made. / Security Risk Management / M.Tech. (Security Management)