West Edmonton Mall: Entrepreneurial Innovation and Consumer Response

Abstract

West Edmonton Mall was developed and has maintained its position as Edmonton's primary focus of retailing, recreational, and leisure activity through innovative entrepreneurial skills and extensive promotions. These are viewed as necessarily concomitant to the size, location, and functional complexity of the mall relative to the size of the Edmonton market and the remainder of the city's retail structure. One strategy was to dominate the market by tempting consumers with the rewards of a complete shopping environment within the confines of one, carefully orchestrated retail complex. The success of this approach is evaluated through an examination of the entrepreneurial behaviour of the developer (Triple Five) in relation to the consumer spatial preferences of a sample of Edmontonians. From this evidence it is suggested that the mall's retail importance may not be as pervasive locally as is commonly thought. Consumer mobility and the intrinsic character of the retail structure are reasons suggested for this, both of which require further investigation and elaboration.

Coping With Mega‐mall Development: An Urban Planning Perspective on West Edmonton Mall

“…In some respects the consequences were not as serious as might have been expected, at least in physical planning terms. West Edmonton Mall has had a massive impact on the city's retail structure (Fairbairn 1991 ;Johnson 19911, and on the central business district in particular, but that was never a determining factor in the political decisions that were taken. Planners might regard this as misguidedand indeed argued against West Edmonton Mall's expansion on just this groundbut the fact remains that Alberta's planning legislation is not designed to be used to regulate business investment.…”