Despite the constant growth of the Finnish shopping center industry during the last 20 years, empirical research on the subject has not been able to keep up the pace. In the era of shopping center proliferation, consumers have more options to choose from, and shopping centers have to compete for precious consumer resources. To stay on top of the competition, shopping center managers need to understand the value of different shopping center image factors to the consumers in their shopping center choice. Even though marketing management is an important feature for many shopping centers, the marketing campaigns still tend to be aimed mainly at a homogenized consumer population instead of specific target groups.

This thesis contributes to the growing cross-national research on shopping center consumer behavior, aiming to provide a better understanding of the preferences and characteristics of Finnish shopping center consumers. More specifically, through a systemic and comparative scientific literature analysis, the thesis identified seven shopping center image factors that influence consumer’s shopping center choice and used the factors to create a list of twelve reference attributes. The thesis applied a best-worst scaling method with the reference attributes to design and implement a mall intercept survey, gathering 132 responses from the customers of a modern regional shopping center in Helsinki. The results of the study, including the contradictory role of entertainment for shopping center customers, supported the previous literature related to the critical roles of location, accessibility as well as comprehensive shop and service selection as the most valued reference attributes in determining consumers’ shopping center choice.

Four distinct shopper segments were identified using a latent class analysis. They were labelled based on their preferences and characteristics as the “entertainment”, “traditional”, “convenience” and “outshopping” segments. Especially the “outshopping” segment was quite unique in their preferences.

The findings of this thesis provide valuable contributions to the limited shopping center research in Finland, and important practical and managerial implications for the shopping center owners and managers in their efforts to know their customers and make better-informed marketing decisions. Also, to the author’s best knowledge, the best-worst scaling method has not been applied in the shopping center research before, thus adding a new industry to the growing list of best-worst scaling studies. This thesis is limited by rather small sample size and the inclusion of just one shopping center, but it provides a good direction and starting point for further research.