Parking area in the shopping center affects customer experience

Parking area is a place that creates the first impression of a customer visiting a shopping center. The availability and convenience of parking is undoubtedly one of the decisive factors in choosing a place to shop.

The task of the managers of shopping centers is not only to provide an adequate number of parking spaces, but also to manage this place to build positive customer experience just after entering the center.

New technologies are helpful

Digitalization opens new possibilities in the area of ​​managing parking spaces in the centers, among others it allows you to eliminate the queues that drivers create under barriers by downloading a parking ticket. In the Globen Shopping Center in Stockholm, the Park & ​​Go concept was used, in which a camera system scans the license plates of cars entering and leaving the center. Payments can be settled at terminals or online.

On the other hand, in the Arkadia shopping center in Warsaw, thanks to the traffic lights, the drivers find free parking spaces easier and LED displays and screens help them find their way around the parking zones. In addition, as part of the Park Assist system, all parking spaces are guarded by more than one thousand camera sensors. The system has also been enriched with Find Your Car functionality. Every customer who forgets where he parked can turn to security staff who will help him quickly find a parked car.

Parking of the future

The described solutions reflect the current technological possibilities. However, it is worth considering how to design a car park to meet the expectations of our customers in the future. Forecasts indicate that there will be more and more electric cars on our streets (in 2040 their market share will exceed 50 percent). Therefore, one of the challenges will be to provide parking spaces equipped with appropriate chargers.

The next trend of the future may be equipping the car park with devices, thanks to which it will become a kind of SPA for our car, eg thanks to placing automatic car wash on the car park.

For owners of shopping centers, proper parking management opens new opportunities in building relationships with customers. Parking can become a place where the center communicates with its clients. Managers can also get information about drivers entering the center in advance, for example by encouraging them to register on the website in exchange for privileges at the entrance to the parking lot. Thanks to this, when entering the car park, the customer will be able to receive personalized offers of products and services available in the shopping center.

A visit to the shopping center starts and ends in the parking lot. A well-managed parking lot and effective solutions will certainly motivate the customer to visit the center again.