(July 15): Clobbered by the crushing effects of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of retailers from Bangkok to Singapore have rushed to set up online shops on big e-commerce platforms to stay afloat this year. Now entire shopping malls are going virtual for the first time.
Marina Square Shopping Mall -- nestled among luxury hotels and popular tourist attractions in central Singapore -- is taking more than 30 of its tenants online with Lazada, the Southeast Asian unit of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. It’s the first shopping centre in the city-state to create a mini virtual replica of its physical mall.
“It’s a new concept in Singapore,” James Chang, chief executive officer of Lazada Singapore, said in an interview. “From a shopping mall’s perspective, it could be seen as competition, but we worked out this partnership because it provides visibility and awareness of the tenants and offline mall.”
