Intu adds origami money birds to "bring joy" to shoppers and boost footfall

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 12, 2017

Mall giant Intu is working to boost footfall at a time when shopping centres are seeing declining visitor traffic in the UK with an interesting initiative that’s both quirky and rewarding for shoppers.

Hundreds of origami birds worth thousands of pounds have been folded and ‘set free’ by the firm across its 14 UK shopping centres following research that showed unexpectedly finding money is Britain’s “most joyful surprise.”

While Intu’s malls have been fairly resilient in recent periods, the rapid migration to online shopping in the UK has seen steadily declining footfall overall. Combined with rising inflation and consumer caution as Brexit looms, retail stores and destinations are pulling out the stops to try to attract people into their physical spaces.

Intu said a team of origami experts spent over 130 hours folding hundreds of the birds worth £10 each, which are being hidden to “surprise and delight shoppers nationwide.” The origami birds are being hidden from May 12-14.

The company acted after analysing the shopping habits of consumers nationwide to come up with the seven types of shopper that are being represented by the origami birds. These are a bargain-hunting hawk, a wise owl who plans ahead, a family day-out shopper represented by a duck, the last-minute chicken shopper, the flamingo who loves shopping and looking good, the window-shopping swan, and the excited peacock who loves to shop for a special occasion.

As mentioned, the initiative follows research into what makes people happy with 55% of survey respondents saying something pleasant that’s unexpected is key.

Two important statistics from the survey were that 35% of people said shopping makes them happier and 38% go shopping to cheer themselves up.

This happiness factor is more important for women (42%) than men (30%) while women are also likely to browse for longer, staying in shopping centres for an average of two hours 12 minutes versus just one hour 24 minutes for men.