Forms and strategies of shopping centers: Which strategies are successful?

Nowadays, Shopping Centers are not for only shopping, they are transferred to multi-functional buildings which can satisfy all kinds of demands. Especially in metropolises and regions that residents have high income level, Shopping Center construction are more than the total number of schools or hospitals. Customers have a key role in highly accelerated number of the shopping centers. This is because of the people who behave not only as customers but also shopping centers being a part of their lives. For this reason, Shopping Centers should not be qualified as a commerce house or a building, they should be evaluated as an industry and every shopping center should be classified according to the standards. Main purpose of this research is to classify all active shopping centers in Ankara according to the specific standards, to determine their main strategic responses related to their industry and to measure their success level in accordance to customers' responses to these main strategies. Ankara is the homeland of every type of shopping centers since the first examples to until recent ones; this increases the efficiency of this research and provides accessibility to every type of shopping centers. According to the results of quantitative and qualitative studies, different strategic responses are determined for each different shopping center types and success level of these responses are confirmed in relation to customers' opinions. Key Words: Shopping Center, Strategical Response, Ankara