The importance of the product and brand factors in the development of consumer experience: Armada 1 and Armada 2 shopping malls

Concepts such as brand identity and brand loyalty are mostly shaped through the way consumers' experiences with brands. In the marketing literature, product personality is related to consumer perception, sense, brand evaluation, and brand interest, while consumer experience and / or brand experience is evaluated in relation to product in design literature. While researching a product-consumer relationship, the brand of the product, the brand's identity, communication, and trustworthiness seem to directly influence consumer choice. In this context, the study researches the users of two shopping malls that have the same corporate identity and same managerial organizations but was built in different time period, and that have the same branding but separate physical structures and spaces in terms of consumer preferences, brand-space perceptions, social and physical formations of consumer places within the scope of product-space associations and communication with consumers. Primarily, unstructed interviews were conducted with 20 participants and their preferences regarding consumption centers were asked. Following open-ended interviews, through survey method, 140 participants were asked about their shopping mall experiences that were shaped by the intellectual, emotional, social and physical dimensions. The results obtained from the questionnaires and consumers' experience were evaluated through these four dimensions. At the final part of the study, there would be assessments on the experiences that shape customers' choice of shopping malls, on how the designed structure of the shopping mall is applied under the criteria of space perception, place identity and brand loyalty.