No shoppers are seen inside a fashion shop in downtown HCMC - Photo: Minh Tam

The falling number of shoppers coupled with the declining demand have exerted a strong pressure on commercial center operators, who have to initiate many programs to keep old tenants and attract new ones.

It can be said that the shopping atmosphere in HCMC has never been as quiet as it is now due to a low number of customers both at luxury commercial centers in the city downtown and ones in peripheral areas over the past time.

According to some commercial centers, the buying power has dropped sharply as consumers have cut their spending. Therefore, some stallholders have had to reduce employees and even return their rented space to cut losses.

Nguyen Thi Anh Hong, general manager of the Maximart supermarket chain, told the Daily that stallholders were mired in difficulties due to the declining buying power.

She said that to share difficulties and support stallholders, commercial center owners have tried many ways, including offering rental supports as a way to retain tenants. Hong did not mention the specific rental cut but said the cut was a must at this time.

The rental reduction has been confirmed by tenants. Quach Nguyen Thanh Phong, general director of Hi-Way Construction & Decoration Joint Stock Co., said that he has received many offers from commercial centers for space whose rental is now calculated based on the sales.

According to Phong, such a special offer results from the low number of shoppers at commercial centers, and thus owners accept to lower their profits to retain tenants and attract new ones to fill up vacant space.

In addition, commercial centers have also regularly organized promotion programs to help tenants attract customers. “We support stallholders in developing programs and conducting promotion activities to attract more customers,” said Hong from Maximart.

A representative of a commercial center in District 1 said that the center has regularly held promotion programs as a way to attract shoppers. Besides, commercial centers now have to actively organize promotion programs instead of waiting for holidays like before, she added.

Thanks to such promotion programs, prices of many products at commercial centers are more affordable than those at independent shops.

The Saigon Times Daily