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How Simon Has the Inside Edge

Jan 23, 2017

3 min read

By: Mappedin

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Simon Property Group is a global leader in retail real estate. Their industry-leading retail properties provide shopping experiences for millions of consumers every day and Mappedin helps them navigate those spaces.

Introduction

The shopper journey has changed drastically. Consumers want what they want, when they want it, and where they want it. In a world of instant gratification and compelling distractions across a multitude of devices, a fast, efficient, and enjoyable shopping experience has never been more critical.

Retailers, mall operators, and mall owners are being challenged to deliver a physical world experience that is similar to the digital world experience: informed, customized, and efficient, with as little friction as possible. We’re proud of our clients and believe that they can provide real world examples that you may find helpful in navigating this space. This is one of them.

The Customer

Simon Property Group (NYSE:SPG) is a global leader in retail real estate ownership, management, and development. Their industry-leading retail properties and investments across North America, Europe, and Asia provide shopping experiences for millions of consumers every day. Not surprisingly, they generate billions in annual retail sales.

The Challenge

Simon’s number one challenge was not having the tools required to keep their mall maps up to date. Because of this, customers couldn’t find what they were looking for as store and amenity locations are always changing. Simon needed a solution that enabled them to easily manage map updates and that would provide a seamless navigation experience for their shoppers. To stay true to the Simon brand, this had to be delivered through best-in-class systems.

The Solution

Mappedin’s fully integrated solution delivered the following tools and benefits to over 200 Simon mall locations:

1. Connect online browsing with in-store purchasing

Discoverability: Mappedin’s “Smart Search” enables shoppers to find what they’re looking for by pre-populating results based on data,delivering the ultimate user friendly experience.

Navigation: By delivering a navigation experience that is simple, efficient and accurate, we’ve enabled shoppers to get to their selected destination with ease.

Perspective: Our highly customized maps incorporate Simon’s brand throughout every aspect. Everything from wall depth to 3Dimagery to user friendly text orientation had never been captured in a software platform before.

Readability: Our vector based maps enable shoppers to pan, zoom, rotate, hover and click ensuring they can easily find what they’re looking for.

2. User-friendly content management system

Management: Simon’s maps are maintained through automation and user friendly tools. By integrating Mappedin’s CMS with Simon’s central CMS, the process of updating tenant and property information is seamless. Changes to Simon’s physical space such as renovations and maintenance can be updated through Mappedin’s easy to use editor tools. 

3. Capture retail in detail

Insights & Analytics: Our reporting enables Simon to better understand, influence and engage with their consumers by capturing actionable insights on brands, products and stores before a transaction is made. This measurement is crucial in understanding the end to end shopper journey.

The Results

Simon is continually looking for opportunities to enhance the shopping experience and we quickly recognized the potential of this new technology to do just that. Consumer response and feedback to our new interactive maps since our pre-holiday launch last year has exceeded expectations, with usage levels well above the targets we set.

- Mikael Thygesen, Chief Marketing Officer, Simon Property Group