Shopping centers have become the contemporary and dynamic life centers that fulfill
various requirements of consumers. The purpose of this research is to analyze consumers’
reasons for preferring shopping malls depending upon their demographic characteristics in
Turkey.
The first contemporary shopping center was founded in 1988 and today this number
has reached 100. In recent years, approximately four new shopping centers have been founded
yearly in big cities of Turkey. This development is accepted as a success; because of the
attractiveness in retailing industry. However the consumer interest in shopping centers has
been leading investors to intensive and unplanned investments. While in 2005 there were 11
regional shopping centers in Ankara(where this research was conducted), in 2007 this number
has reached 20. With the direction of this point, the purpose of this research is to determine
the consumer tendencies as a guide to land owners, developers and managers in order to
prevent unplanned investments in Ankara. In this manner, depending upon the demographic
features of consumers, shopping center preference reasons, the time that consumers spent in
shopping centers and the time they spend in reaching shopping centers had been analyzed.
In this research, in 11 shopping centers located in Ankara, capital city of Turkey, the
data was gathered from 6353 consumers by a questionnaire. According to the results, product
variety, convenience for wandering and entertaining are the reasons of shopping center
preferences of consumers, respectively. Approximately half of the consumers stay in these
malls for 2-3 hours. And also it has been determined that majority of the consumers visiting
the shopping centers comes from secondary trade zon