He also made the intriguing point that the ratio of good to bad news in the British press has moved from 3:1 to 1:18 in the last 30 years.

Right now the big 'bad news' story is the impact of humanity on the environment and indeed sustainability was a theme which ran throughout the conference.

So linking the two, is it not the case that shopping centres will be expected to take the lead in dealing with the environmental challenge?

Consider this. A shopper travels eight miles to her local shopping area and does so about 80 times a year, ignoring trips to her local supermarket.

This produces an annual mileage of 640 miles which, according to the National Energy Foundation, creates 250kg of CO2.

If 60 per cent of a centre's shoppers travel by car and the centre attracts 10 million shoppers, this generates a grand total of 1.5 million tonnes of CO2.

The C-Change Trust reckons a cost impact of £10 per tonne so that one shopping centre has made a negative economic impact of £15m - seriously bad news and worthy of an intervention.

So maybe this is a good time to review your public transport customer care programme, ensure your mall guides have copious and accurate route guides and generally give this area a high priority.

The other marketing challenge here is to maintain centre revenues.

Shoppers who switch from car to public transport spend less, about half as much per trip.

So marketers will need to find novel solutions to deliver goods bought in a centre to the homes of their purchasers.

Rickshaw anyone?

Stephen Logue,chairman,

Business Blueprints

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