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By Yvette Elliott, Mall Maverick
Recent conversations with national marketers of shopping centers reveal a significant shift in how the industry is approaching AI. Six months ago, the discussion centered around whether generative AI would actually impact retail discovery. Now, following Mall Maverick’s October piece Beyond the Search Bar: Why Malls Hold the Master Key to Generative AI-Era Retail Dominance, the question has moved from: “Why should we care about this?” to “How do we actually implement it?”
It’s the right question to be asking. While the strategic case is clear — generative AI users now prefer AI recommendations over social media for purchase decisions, and malls using AI-driven insights are seeing 11% traffic improvements, according to research from Purdue University — there’s still a significant gap between recognizing the potential and implementing practical solutions.
Through its client work, Mall Maverick has discovered something encouraging. The most successful shopping centers aren’t trying to transform their approach to generative AI overnight. Instead, they’re taking a systematic, phased approach that delivers quick wins while building toward sustainable competitive advantages.
Mall Maverick has been implementing these strategies across its client network, and the early results are validating what it predicted in October. More importantly, the company is seeing patterns emerge around what works, what doesn’t and where marketing managers should focus their initial efforts.
Working with shopping centers across its network, Mall Maverick has learned that the biggest barrier to incorporating generative AI isn’t technology or budget. It’s knowing which moves to make first. Many marketing managers get paralyzed trying to tackle universal AI optimization, native AI assistants and retail media expansion simultaneously.
The winners are taking a different approach. They’re starting with foundation-building moves that create immediate value while setting the stage for more sophisticated implementations.
The most effective implementations start with understanding where you stand today. This means taking a comprehensive look at your digital ecosystem before making any major changes.
Audit Your Current AI Readiness
Before you can optimize for AI discovery, you need to understand your current position. Start by evaluating these three areas:
Mall Maverick’s initial audits consistently reveal that most shopping centers have significant untapped potential in their data collection and optimization efforts.
Quick Win: Optimize Your Website for AI Discovery
The fastest path to AI visibility is making sure your website content is organized in ways that AI systems can easily understand and reference. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity about shopping options in your area, having well-organized, clearly labeled information dramatically improves your chances of being mentioned in the response.
This means ensuring your store listings, event details and promotional content are formatted consistently and include the specific details that AI assistants look for when making recommendations to users.
Deploy Smart Content Optimization
With your foundation in place, the focus shifts to creating AI-friendly content that serves both human visitors and AI systems. This includes:
Launch Pilot AI Features
This is where you begin testing native AI capabilities. Start small with features like:
The key is starting with one high-impact feature and perfecting it before expanding.
Advanced Analytics Implementation
Following a pilot implementation project, successful centers are implementing the kind of sophisticated analytics that drove the 11% traffic improvements found in the Purdue study. This includes:
For national marketing directors who manage a portfolio, this is where the real competitive advantage emerges. Advanced analytics allow you to view performance across all your centers simultaneously, identifying which properties are outperforming others and why. You can spot successful strategies at one location and quickly replicate them across your entire portfolio, while also benchmarking individual center performance against your portfolio average. This bird’s-eye view of what’s working — and what isn’t — across multiple properties creates optimization opportunities that single-location operators simply can’t access.
1. “We Don’t Have the Technical Expertise”
The most successful implementations partner with specialists who understand both retail real estate and AI technology. You don’t need to build an in-house AI team. You need partners who can execute while transferring knowledge to your team.
2. “The Budget Requirements Seem Overwhelming”
Smart marketers are taking a phased approach that spreads costs over line items and allows for learning and adjustment along the way. Starting with foundational optimizations requires modest initial investment, and early improvements in marketing efficiency can help justify continued investment in more advanced features. The key is viewing this as a systematic build-up rather than a large upfront expense, allowing you to scale your investment based on what you’re seeing work at your specific properties.
3. “Our Tenants Won’t Understand the Value”
The most effective approach is leading with results, not explanations. Marketing managers who implement pilot programs and share performance data find tenants quickly become advocates rather than skeptics.
The reality Mall Maverick is seeing across the industry is clear: While many operators are still evaluating their options, early movers are building advantages that will become increasingly difficult to match. The shopping centers implementing AI strategies today will have 12 to 18 months of data, optimization experience and established tenant relationships by the time the majority of the industry recognizes this as a competitive necessity.
The question isn’t whether GenAI will reshape retail discovery — the company’s October data made that clear. The question is whether you’ll be positioned as a leader or follower when the transformation accelerates.
The marketing managers seeing the strongest results aren’t necessarily the most technically sophisticated or best funded. They’re the ones who started with clear implementation roadmaps and committed to systematic execution.
If you’re ready to move from strategy to implementation, this framework provides a path forward. The foundation work begins immediately, but the competitive advantages build over months and years.
About Mall Maverick
Mall Maverick is a digital platform optimization company specializing in generative AI-ready website ecosystems for shopping centers and mixed-use properties. Through comprehensive back-end optimization and cross-channel digital promotion solutions, Mall Maverick helps shopping centers position themselves for discovery in the age of artificial intelligence.
About the Author
Yvette Elliott is COO at Mall Maverick and a recognized authority on AI implementation in retail real estate. She helps property managers and marketing teams navigate digital transformation with practical, results-driven strategies. Her tagline: “Clarity in a digital world.”