Centri commerciali urbani, virtual Market-Places, politiche aziendali dell'immateriale e sviluppo delle grandi città

In global markets, intangible features of products are becoming more and more important in buying behaviour. People’s consumptions are driven by tangible components of supplies (i.e. materials, shape, and other physical aspects) but also by non-tangible ones (like brands, colours, style, design, pre and post sales services, etc.). Due to fast innovation imitation and to agile information exchanges all over the world, most part of tangible products are becoming the same, and often they are also produced by the same companies, or at least they are realized with the same production processes that are able to grant to the producer the best cost advantages. So, differentiation processes of supplies are mostly centred on intangible features, which, in fact, are company specific. In nowadays markets the choice of a new car is the result of a long comparison between many supplies in the same market segment; but the final choice is generally made on services, accessories, style, design and, of course, price. Very few people indeed are able to recognise and evaluate mechanical and electronic aspects of a vehicle, so the intangible aspects remain as the principal ones to be considered for a choice. Moreover, intangible features are defining buying and consumption behaviour in most part of our lives. In this context, shopping malls are becoming important agents in defining kind and quality of intangible features of supplies, not only establishing assortments, but also working on the consumption behaviour atmosphere that they determine in all its aspects (style, colours, sensations as noise, silence, smells, elaxing spaces, and all the services like parking, merchandise picking, children care, payments, etc.). In this way, shopping malls are responsible of the quality of intangible consumption process which has deep impact on people and on the community people lives in. That’s why shopping malls, both physical and virtual ones (i.e. e-commerce sites and other kind of virtual market-places), are significant in big cities, where commercial density is high. By defining intangible aspects of consumptions, shopping malls determine the development of a particular geographical area (normally surrounding a big city) because they are able to aggregate demand, learn from buyer’s behaviour and play an active role in establishing the choice alternatives, which means forging the consumption habits and expectations of populations and cities.