By Dr. Shuguang Wang, Dr. Ricardo Gomez-Insausti, Marco Biasiotto, Pina Barbiero and B. McNally

The idea of increasing marginal profits of shopping centres through cross-shopping in relation to entertainment has gained acceptance in the 1990s; however, this relationship has not been as strong as first anticipated.  It appears that entertainment hardly produces the synergistic effects needed to encourage cross-shopping. 

This study was designed to examine and compare cross-shopping patterns related to retail-driven businesses in order to identify the factors that influence the specificity and intensity of cross-shopping within entertainment, and between entertainment and retailing categories in a power node and a regional mall.  Findings showed that entertainment-related cross-shopping is more specific and less intense at the power node than at the mall. The power node facilitated 'delayed' cross-shopping while the mall encouraged more 'immediate' forms of cross-shopping.  Types of entertainment cross-shopping proved to be associated with level of enjoyment only at the mall, and with cross-shopping intensity only at the power node.  The mall exhibited several dominant types of entertainment cross-shoppers but mainly concentrated within a specific range of cross-shopping intensity, while the power node displayed a few dominant types widely dispersed across different levels of cross-shopping intensity.