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M. Tech. Business Administration / Malls posed some threat to traditional retailers, but many retailers defended successfully by using niche, differentiation and customer focus strategies to dodge and defend competition from the malls. These strategies were however, weakened by new forms of competition which emerged from new retailers who located their businesses in the residential area of Soshanguve. Most of these new retailers were from other African countries in origin mostly from Somalia. It was not clear how these new retailers managed to attract a significant size of the market. This study attempted to investigate the threat of emerging shopping malls established inside Soshanguve as competitors of the traditional retailers of the township, which are mostly small in size. The study further investigated the causes of failure of many such traditional retailers and the development of robust strategies they could adopt in order to offset this new competition.

M. Tech. Business Administration / The purpose of this study is to profile the suburban mall shopper in terms of their demographic profile characteristics and to gain an understanding of the factors that mall managers employ to attract these shoppers to their suburbian shopping malls as well as the influence these factors may have on their consumer behaviour.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the Masters Degree of Technology: Public Relations Management, Durban University of Technology, 2013. / In South Africa, the competition between shopping centres has increased significantly over the years due to the increase in the number of shopping centres and the changing shopping behaviour. The success of any shopping centre depends on the revenue generated by customers who frequent the mall to make purchases or use the services of the retail/entertainment outlets. To attract customers to shopping centres, management has to ensure that malls are effectively promoted to relevant stakeholders. Communication is important in any promotional, public relations or marketing activity and should be effective, persuasive and managed in a formal and structured way which fits into the overall goals of the mall. Shopping centre management may use a number of communication tools such as (and are not limited to) advertising, sales promotions, public relations, personal selling and sponsorship. However, do these strategies play a role in generating revenue to promote the overall success of a shopping centre? This dissertation, therefore, sets out to identify and examine the communication tools used by shopping centre managers within the greater Durban area in South Africa. It does so by interviewing marketing managers and the tenant mix of five competitive shopping centres within the greater Durban area in South Africa. Data will be collected from the respondents through questionnaires and an interview schedule. One of the significant results emerging from this study is that the function of tenant relations; promotions; publicity; and public relations plays an integral part in the effective functioning of a shopping centre.