On April 26 Olena Obukhivska, Communications Manager of Arricano, took part in “Retail & Malls Summit” which for the third consecutive year is organized by Malls Club Ukraine & Belarus in cooperation with Retail Platforma branch organization. In 2018 the theme of the Summit was “shopping of impressions". Over 150 industry representatives discussed issues related to customer experience management.
“It is obvious why “shopping of impressions” has become an actual trend and a key theme of Retail & Malls Summit 2018, - says Artem Shlapak, head of Malls Club Ukraine & Belarus. - Historically, Ukrainian consumer today has few opportunities for pleasant leisure and a shopping mall is the most accessible place for recreation, meetings with friends, colleagues and close ones. Shopping malls have become a part of lifestyle of Ukrainian consumer who visits the favorite shopping mall not only to buy food, clothing, accessories, etc., but also to revive himself/herself with emotions. In a comfortable trading space - with the right design, merchandising and service - a consumer can get rid of stress that daily persuades him in the office, on the street and even at home. Commercial objects that intelligently use “shopping of impressions” as a part of their customers’ lifestyle prolong the period of stay of customers in a shopping mall, providing increase of traffic and growth of turnover.”
 Speakers of Retail & Malls Summit 2018 - retailers, representatives of shopping malls, analysts, architects presented the optimal pool of ways of developing and dynamical introduction of “shopping of impressions”, told about the best practices in managing consumer experience in shopping malls and retail stores. Ukrainian and international experts - Uğur BERK (CEO İstinyePark Shopping Center Istanbul), Pavlo Protsenko (Citrus), Oleksii Filanovskyi (Foxtrot), Olena Obukhivska (Arricano), Hanna Koval (Sova), Marianna Samsonova (USUPSO Ukraine), Hlib Usakovskyi (Flow & Architecture), Viktor Pavlov (UAmade), Diana Tsyhankova (GfK Ukraine), Oleksii Kniazev (Watcom Group), Kateryna Zhurakovska and Tatiana Atadjanova (IFC Gulliver) share their cases and life hacks.
Olena Obukhivska, Communication Manager of Arricano Real Estate Plc in her speech “Social space of a shopping mall: emotions and experience”, emphasized the possibility to use current social drivers for developing projects and programs that involve visitors into thematic events, giving an opportunity to get positive emotions, generate traffic and form loyalty. During her presentation she demonstrated several Arricano cases and tasks solved within the framework of projects. Thus, the case “Cool School! And no study!” where RayON shopping mall became a partner of teachers of Desnianskyi district, is an example of a project where the educational development platform - edutainment was launched and the target audience was segmented according to interests and professional background. In the project “School of Dreams” Arricano team managed to motivate the guests of Prospekt shopping mall to express their opinion about modern schools. Thus, several unexpected social trends which the organizers shared with the Ministry of Education and other educational establishments were discovered.
“Today shopping malls are being developed as a phenomenal social space where “a piece” of school, theater, talk-show or other socially significant institutions can be transferred to,” the speaker notes. – The thematic BTL-projects allow a shopping mall not only to integrate retail brands into a communication platform and to increase traffic, but also to develop offline with new accents giving visitors an opportunity to experience new positive emotions, getting new customer experience and new knowledge. The obtained positive experience develops loyalty to a shopping mall. After all, the guest will remember that he/she felt warm, soulful and comfortable. And one always wants to return to a place where he felt well.”
    Olena shared the findings that motivate Arricano team to use custom experience management: 
1.    Emotions during shopping allow guests of a shopping mall to fill the internal resource and the “personal world” with new knowledge and emotions.
2.    Positive-minded guests make more purchases. And all purchases are successful.
3.    Each shopping mall is characterized by its own thematic test drive of projects.
“Each brand has its own experience or “emotional focus” on design, friendly relations with sellers, loyalty program or BTL. The main emotional platform of Arricano are communications in the social space of the shopping malls, in order to get fun, experience and to share a lifestyle, - summed up the communications manager of Arricano.
The main conclusion made by the participants of Retail & Malls Summit 2018 is that it is necessary to use custom experience management: if you do not develop a “shopping of impressions” today, tomorrow a retailer will feel this “gap” when the flow of visitors and profit figures decrease.