CONSUMER behaviour at Yangon’s shopping centres has changed considerably over the past year, according to several industry sources.

Unlike in the past, more and more people now check an item’s price tag before putting it in their trolley. Other shoppers are buying less but coming back more often.

Daw Toe Toe Naing, a marketing manager at Super One shopping centre, said many customers who would previously buy enough food for one month or for two weeks are now buying only what they need for the next few days.

“In the past, customers would just pick up all their items without closely checking the prices. These people are now more price-conscious and are choosing cheaper brands when there is no noticeable difference in quality,” she said.

And customers are saying that convenience and wider services are the reasons why they are going to shopping centres to buy seafood, snacks and medicines.

She said shoppers also are choosing to visit centres that hold promotions and offer discounts and lucky draws.

When it comes to availability of brands, most shoppers still tend to go by price and a pparent quality, rather than select a certain brand – often because popular brands sell out quickly and imported brands are limited.

As most businesspeople are not agents for a particular brand in the market in Myanmar and businesspeople are prone to bringing in the goods via agents from other South East Asian countries, a difference in price and a lack of up-to-date materials are found many brands of goods.

U Kyaw Win Than, a manager for the Yankin Centre, said there are limited numbers of buying agents that shops can go to when choosing their products, which means that customers have a limited range of brands to select from.

“Most businesspeople – probably 80 percent – are not genuine agents for the brands they buy and sell because this is costly and our market is not big enough to support retail outlets,” he said.

“Most buyers of branded products often go abroad, so if they want any of the latest products, they just buy them elsewhere where they are freely available,” he said.

Businesses, he said, try to offer services that are common in other countries – like time-limited refunds – but these often fail here for a variety of reasons.

“In the case of refunds, 80pc of customers would not fully appreciate the value of the service and it would only cause complications,” said U Kyaw Win Than.

Most shopping centres are also working to offer more promotions to bring shoppers into their outlets, said Daw Phyu Phyu Soe, marketing manager of Olympic Co.

“We have been including more of promotion in the last few years,” she said, adding that increasing numbers of people are looking closely at the quality and design of what they are buying.