Adults like visiting Santa as much as kids
Posted December 16, 2016 8:41 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
DELTA (NEWS 1130) – Sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall is almost as much a holiday tradition as turkey, the yule log and egg nog. With the experience now about three generations old, the demand to see the Man in Red at a shopping mall is greater than ever, according to one expert.
“Mall Santa’s work for one reason: it worked with the parents and the parent’s parents,” says SFU Marketing Professor Lindsay Meredith. “It is a cultural tradition. If your dad did it, and your grandpa did it, by gosh your kids are going to do it too.”
Line-ups are extending north of two hours at some malls. Jolly Old St. Nick is a fixture everywhere including at the Enchanted Light Maze in Vancouver “Over 7,000 people go through [the maze] a night, and the line-ups to just to see Santa run about 40 minutes. And that’s in -10 degree weather,” explains Meredith.
The value in terms of having Santa at the mall is measured in a couple of ways. There’s the fear of losing business to another mall competitor if one has Santa and the other doesn’t, but there’s also the visual when it comes to where Kris Kringle sits.
“Look at the size of the investment in the setting,” says Meredith. “There’s substantial cash laid out to build that stuff. Santa is just a focal point. Take a look around at what you see surrounding [Santa’s] line-up. There’s a pile of organization and personnel going into that.”
Then there’s the other marketing element — the picture along with the revenue attached to those memorable pictures.
