The Fatti story is just getting more and more exciting with new international opportunities arising, and fascinating learnings about shopper behaviour gleaned from the new Mall of Africa. Fatti manager Adrian Maguire reports back
How have operations grown since we last spoke last October?
Fatti has grown its resources base as the business is now getting into more a business phase of its operation. We’ll be utilising its proximity marketing and loyalty to the customers more extensively, as this is the final value-proposition pillar of the Fatti solution.
The Mall of Africa opening must have scaled things to a whole new level. What Fatti learnings can you share from the MoA?
It is always interesting to analyse stats for a new mall. It’s however definitely something that will keep changing for a while. Some of the most positive stats are that there is high loyalty, with a high percentage of people shown returning to the mall, proving it’s not a one-time-visitor mall. We are able to identify unique shoppers and new shoppers, and could also show that the attraction was not only for weekend shoppers but that there is also already a high percentage of “on the way home from work” shoppers, which indicates good sustainability.
Have you been able to advise MoA management with any Fatti findings which caused them to change the way anything is done at the mall?
We have a lot of very valuable information already, but I think it would be to soon to react on the findings. The mall should first settle down to a more consistent trend before changes are made. The good news is we will be the first to see the settling down, particularly in shopper behaviour.
How do MoA shoppers differ from Newtown Junction and The Grove shoppers, in terms of what Fatti found?
There is a remarkable difference in the shopper behaviour between all the malls. I think the most important statistic we have is that each mall is very different to the next. This is not only related to number of shoppers and time of day but who is a return customer and who is new; and most importantly, the behavioural patterns that we see emerge. We have seen, for instance, that Newtown Junction is very much a weekday mall, while The Grove is frequented more on weekends, and Mall of Africa is currently somewhere between the two, with weekday visits picking up. At Newtown Junction we have already picked up some interesting patterns that contradicts typical notions and tenants have been very satisfied with those insights and have altered their advertising strategies based on that. What this particular pattern also does is it shows the tenants where their customers come from and where they go afterwards, which has implications for marketing and advertising, not to mention strategic planning. And it is forever changing – behavioural patterns aren’t static – what is typical on a Friday evening in June is not necessarily going to be the same in September… and we can capture the patterns and the changes as they happen. We are just scratching the surface, and the longer we go, the more useful the bank of intelligence we are building up.
What are the plans for the next six months in terms of roll-out?
Fatti has a very exciting next six months ahead – we’ll be moving into six malls in Mauritius, which will dominate the market there, and will also be coming online in a number of South African malls. We’ve also embarked on a greater international opportunity that utilises our own developed source code for Wi-Fi location services. This opportunity not only takes us into the UK and Nordic regions but we’ll see our solution deployed on ocean liners, in stadiums, at universities and tube stations and many more interesting environments.
