Center attraction: retailers pull out the stops to attract consumers back into stores.

• Author: Biton, Adva
• Position: Business Trends

Given the option of going out or staying indoors in your pajamas, which do most people choose? A few spry individuals aside, most people opt for comfort and convenience.

That very choice is what many retailers have to fight against. When your customer can stay at home in their pajamas and order their goods from Amazon, driving down to the mall, finding a parking spot, walking to the store and rifling through goods just doesn't seem as attractive. For years, analysts have anticipated the death knell for brick-and-mortar retail.

Instead, retailers are fighting back. Experiential retail--retail that is focused on the shopper's experience within the retail space, rather than the perfunctory sale of goods--is rejuvenating many shops and centers across the country.

"We want people to try something new, to gather together. Even though we want people shopping and going into the stores and spending their dollars, we also know that the reason they came to the mall was to have an experience," says Heather Nash, marketing and business development manager for The Shops at South Town. "They could have done the shopping online."

Come on in

Why go to the Shops at South Town? Surely you could order the same things online, right? But here's what a website won't give you: monthly free community events that bring people together, large motorized stuffed animals for your children to ride around, or the first taste of new local restaurants.

The Shops at South Town is embracing change. A new renovation of the space is centered around creating areas where people feel free to sit and gather together. Light pours into the shopping center, and the aesthetic of the space is "bringing the outside in, with a mountain-modern look," says Nash.

Everything is designed with the shoppers' experience in mind, she says. The Shops at South Town have a lot of early mall walkers, so the doors open at 7 a.m. to accommodate them. The area has a lot of young mothers, so there is a renovated fountain with a children's play area planned beside it, and where concerts take place some evenings. Another sitting area has chairs that look like spinning tops, where groups of young friends dare each other to sit in the wobbling artistic chairs, laughing and taking pictures of each other as they try to gain balance and spin. Large digital screens sometimes show sports events--but sometimes feature digital art from local artists instead. A digital directory is fitted with a camera that allows...