The Regeneration of a Shopping Center Starts from Consumers’ Preferences: A Best-Worst Scaling Application

Malling in the United States was characterized by the construction of large shopping centers in the suburbs of the city, in close connection with urban sprawl. These retail spaces have undergone a severe crisis resulting in their closure since the 1990s. In response to this phenomenon, the so-called “demalling” practice has spread intending to redevelop them with new functions. Although more incipient, in Europe this process is only evolving in the last few. This study illustrates a Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) experiment to rank consumer preferences to identify new functions to be installed in the existing shopping centers. Different items were considered in this study, including both commercial characteristics, such as type and size, and architectural-design aspects, such as internal organization, external areas feature, and services. An online survey was conducted and a total of 600 respondents was collected and analyzed through the Analytical Best-Worst Score (ABWS) algorithm. Starting from a real case related to a shopping mall in Turin (Northern Italy), the experiment results were used for definition of specific guidelines for regeneration projects.