Queen Victoria Markets

From the Queen Victoria Market Website:

http://www.qvm.com.au/corporate.aspx

The Company

Queen Victoria Market Pty Ltd (“the Company”), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Melbourne City Council (“the Council”) has operated since July 1997 to manage and develop the Queen Victoria Market (“the Market”).

The Queen Victoria Market occupies 7 hectares within the Melbourne Central Business District and has been operated by the Council or the Company for 130 years.

There are 140 leasehold premises and over 600 periodical licence stallholders. It is a well-known historic and cultural icon for the City of Melbourne and is the largest and most original of all the retail markets in the metropolitan area. It has national and international significance as an historic open market.

The Market is very much a fresh food market based on fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, chicken and delicatessen lines. General lines include clothing, footwear and accessories. Giftware and souvenirs have become an important part of the Market with particular appeal to interstate and overseas tourists as well as segments of the local market. Take away food and coffee have had significant growth over the last few years.

The Market first opened on Sundays in 1979, initially trading in general merchandise which considerably strengthened revenue and its consumer appeal for general lines. Fresh food trading on Sundays commenced in 1994. Since then the Sunday trade in the food area has developed well.

The general trading area has experienced substantially increased competition as a result of more options for shoppers, especially on Sundays.

The Sunday Market has also become a major shopping and tourist destination in its own right. Food trading on Sundays has grown substantially. Queen St, on Sundays, with plants, coffee, pancakes and other offerings, is now a strong, colourful trading area sought by traders. The theme of Sunday being a “family” day is supplemented by live entertainment with bands, fashion parades and other activities in Queen Street.

There have been many changes during the Market's operation over the years. A strategy has been implemented to make the facilities of the Market more available outside normal Market operating times, especially in the evenings. This strategy, of encouraging additional uses, has been very successful. There are now regular annual events such as Opera in the Market, which attract large audiences each year plus a major seasonal event, the Suzuki Night Market.

The Company launched the first Night Market 11 years ago. This event is aimed at bringing local residents and tourists into the Market on Wednesday nights over summer months. This has been an excellent success with over 300,000 people visiting the Suzuki Night Market during the last season. Market research each year shows excellent feedback on the acceptance of the event from both patrons and traders.

The Company has also introduced new features to the traditional day Market. Market tours, introduced in the early 1990s continue to be popular and this year the Market expects to have over 4,500 tour patrons. A Wine Market, to complement the food offering now operates in I Shed along with Organic Fruit and Vegetables. This was initially launched on Sundays only to provide an outlet for small wineries around Victoria to sell their wines in addition to their cellar door sales. The Wine Market was slow to start but feedback from participating wineries indicates good steady growth and acceptance by patrons and is now trading three days per week (Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays).

The Organics offering at the Market has grown with the inclusion of an Organic dry goods trader, an Organic butcher operating in the Meat Hall and an Organic café in Therry St. This strengthens the Market’s position as the place to shop for Organic food with a full complement of Organic goods available. The demand for Organic food is forecast to have continued growth and the strong core of Organic food retailers at the Market is an excellent drawcard for the Market overall.

This year the Market expects to have approximately 10 million or more shoppers visit the site. This is an overall is an excellent indication that the Market is still relevant and an important Melbourne institution. The challenge is to maintain the Market’s relevance with constantly changing customer demand, expectations, and competition but also preserve the heritage aspects of the site. Patrons for the Market mostly come from local suburbs but also are drawn from outer suburbs, even Victorian towns and cities, eg Geelong, Ballarat, especially on weekends. Another important group of patrons are tourists, from regional Victoria, interstate and international. Tourists are important, especially for the non food area of the Market.

Retailing in Melbourne continues to be highly competitive with an estimated increase of 30% in retail space over the last 5 years. Competition for traders in the Market includes a constantly increasing number of outlet stores, extended trading hours, increasingly high standards of merchandising and good customer service. There have been major new centres opened, eg QV, GPO, Federation Square, Melbourne Central, and now, the Southern Cross Station in Spencer Street. These trends mean it is vitally important to constantly position shopping at the Market as a rich experience; a lot more than simple shopping. The traditional market theme of low price is simply not sufficient to maintain and grow Market patronage in today’s competitive environment. There has to be a proactive and continual reinforcement of the Market as being a satisfying and fulfilling place to visit for essentials, interesting or exotic goods.

The Market attracts a diverse range of customers from buyers of fresh foods to international and domestic travellers shopping for a range of products and seeking a quintessential “Melbourne experience”. The Marketing Strategy seeks to position the Market as a place for shoppers to consistently find; Quality, a broad range of products, uniqueness of product range, highly competitive prices, and a great shopping experience overall which is different from normal retail centres.

Marketing a New Mall

Changing the consumption behaviors in an environment where cues and signals encourage over consumption is a difficult prospect and one which is sure to take revolt among the developers and financiers and beneficiaries of the economic windfall of consumption.  More than likely consumers will consume a particular resource until there is nothing left unless a change in information occurs, regulations are put in place and perhaps moral sensibilities are heightened.  If environmental behavior is socially influenced then the spaces where we collectively learn from must lead this evolution of our cultural consciousness.  From a psychological and philosophical stand point, reducing consumption depends on more than the built environment, but where design has a role, new environments where over consumption is viewed as perhaps silly can be created.  This cognitive approach reinforces the approach of redesigning these consumption spaces and thus reframing the signals in our environment.

Some certain societal elements have sought to cast aside the allure of consumption both in the past and currently.  Here in Melbourne the CERES facility in Brunswick with facilities such as a community farm and “The Bike Shed” promote a lifestyle choice which is decidedly anti consumption.  Situationalist activities whereby experience and play are foremost, such as the recently witnessed “Melbourne Zombie Shuffle”, hark to the French equivalent from yesteryear teach us that through shared cultural experience a new connection in the urban environment can be made. 

From a Psychological perspective, consumerism will never make full a life or make it more worthwhile.  Psychological studies have derided the myth that happiness does not in fact correlate to material possession but instead with healthy relationships and meaningful leisure and work.  Meaning therefore, does not stem from the TV or from our consumption spaces.  From a social  perspective new spaces need to be developed where the status quo is overturned and consumption is viewed as a need which has consequence, the Newtonian law; every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  If consumption has become normalised through our environment, cognitive learnt behavior of a new type of environment can generate a new cultural ideal, created through environs which actually connect us to the things that make what we need?

Mine is an idealistic standpoint, this is something I have tried to divorce myself from to no effect.  I want to change the world.  I see shopping malls as an unnecessary evil, a corrupted tool for the already corrupt.  However I am not naive to the fact that shopping is here to stay and that indeed these spaces are vital, not only the economy but to our cultural learning and structure. 

However I believe, through this research, that the deep structure of a new type becomes a vital new interface between production and consumption.  If we occupy a liminal space in our mind at the point of consumption then in opening up our liminal spaces, our consumption spaces to something more than consumptive reinforcement, a new relationship and awareness of what it really is, these things, these signals we consume can develop. 

There are already spaces within our environment which are consumption spaces but which foster a product knowledge and a social interaction, the market, the farmers market et al. has evolved very little in its principle of direct interaction with consumers and producers from its origins at the Greek Agora.  Consumers have a very good idea of where their produce comes from, coupled with the social interaction that occurs from the purchase creating a cognitive social grounding.  Here we consume as social and moral beings at a level unlike that of a shopping mall environment.  In places like markets we actually use more of our human insight and intelligence to evaluate, distinguish, interact, negotiate and then finally purchase a product.  The key to the spiritually sustainable lifestyle is to work for our pleasure, rather than have someone hand it to us on a platter.  It s my supposition that material goals which define our consumer culture can be replaced with transcendental goals in which we understand our place in the world and the effects of our decisions.  This capacity for an understanding that we are a part of a greater entity than ourselves is a uniquely human characteristic, albeit one that we as a species has not yet mastered.

Positioning

Producer - Consumer

Make/Grow - Buy

Surface - Interface

Access - Proximity

Size/Scale - Sociability

Global Outlook - Local Design