marketeer
Published: 16 June, 2008
So it's fare thee well to all my loyal readers, Sid & Doris Bonkers.
I have decided to quit my day job at Business Blueprints some 20-odd years after I set the company up and am passing on my column to my colleague Paul Latimer.
In our practice, we have been at the forefront of many exciting initiatives and have built upon the first principles of marketing.
We created the first shopper count system at Meadowhall in 1990 together with the first Retail Academy in the UK. Mindful of the ambiguity and degree of error in counting systems, we established an analytical model to reach behind blunt shopper numbers to quantify behaviour in terms of spend, frequency and conversion.
This has now evolved into a unique performance measurement tool, Bbenchmark, which enables a centre, via an annual survey, to see itself objectively in the context of the industry and to quantify the aggregate sales revenues of its retailers.
The role of catering, once the industry's Cinderella, has been transformed into what is now a fundamental part of the mix. Our contribution to this, with research, feasibilities, planning projects and new catering concepts, has been widely recognised.
Business Blueprints will continue to innovate, measure performance and provide affordable insights to help you run more successful centres. It would be great if, in future, you could give Paul Latimer your reactions or questions so that he can address them in this column.
So that's it. I'm off. I'm going to spend more time on a small restaurant business and create some space for interesting opportunities that might include a book on my time in shopping centres - you have been warned!
Stephen Logue, chairman, Business Blueprints
