If you bored of shopping only at department stores that meaning almost the same experiences, there is some hangout place that I recommend you go which is open-air market in Thailand named “Artbox Thailand”
What is Art box Thailand and why is so popular?
Art box Thailand is the night open-air market in Bangkok, which comes up with a theme of chic, relaxing, and trendy. This market has variety of creative food and beverages, free concert, fashion items, handmade home decorations and art zone. Therefore, Art box market seems to be a small community for teenagers to shop, eat, and relax in this newest hangout place. Moreover, the place where market located is very convenient to come but it does not have permanently located. When the event has exactly date, time and place will be announced through Facebook fan page and Instagram.
Let’s look at the main concept of Artbox Thailand. It is the creative market. So, the great, strange and excellent ideas have been seen in every shop in this market, which approximately 200 shops have been on a display. According to Tripadvisor (2017), the famous travel page, recommends Artbox Thailand under the vote for 165 out of 573. The page has recommended this market as one of the top things to do in Bangkok when visiting Thailand. There are many categories of shop which can be divided into 4 groups.
- Foods and beverages
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Creative Thai and international foods with the color, packaging, and positioning of foods
- Fashion items and home decorations
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Street clothes, glasses, shoes, watches, handmade mobile cases and home decoration items
- Free concerts
Mini concert makes market lively and energetic
- Art zone
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An opportunity for young artists to show their talents
From all the features, the pop-up market has given a unique shopping experience to customers unlike the normal shopping experience in the department store. Artbox uses social media as tools to connect with sellers and buyers. Many sellers who come from online channels can expand their shops to offline store.
Who loves open-air market?
The target customers are teenagers because Artbox has been known by using social media promoted. In this online platform, people who were born between 1980 to 2001 are millennials or generation Y that are familiar with the use of technology (McCarron, 2016). Furthermore, the products in this market are creative and unique. Therefore, groups of people who come to the market have the same interest and may create community together.
Focusing on the behavior of millennials generation, this generation and the technology are growing up at the same time. Technology seems to be the main factor of their lives which almost everyone from this generations has individual space on online platform, and they often search and share their personal information to others through this platform (Bolton et al., 2013). This means that the target group of Artbox market has online behavior and leads to use individual space for sharing their shopping experiences.
According to Christofides et al. (2009), cited in Bolton et al. (2013), most of personal story of millennials have been posted and shared on social media. This expresses that this generation wants to communicate to others of how they live their own lifestyle. Similarly, the stage three of hierarchy of need theory by Maslow (2013); people want to be accepted, loved and respected by external factors. Therefore, people who share their personal information such as their experience through social media perceive online support (Boonlue et al.,2016). Moreover, as they are the consumers, they will be the communicators and badge identity.
Thailand was ranked 7th among the Asia pacific countries in using online platform (Boonlue et al., 2016). This argument is supported by Pornsakulvanich (2017) who stated that Thai people especially 49% of age between 18 and 25 usually use social network system in daily life such as Facebook (6.10 hours/day) and Instagram (4.02 hours/day). Additionally, the behavior of Thai people was influenced by Thai culture which communities are significant than individuals. This led people to become social media addict in order to connect to their society.
The way of millennials uses Artbox as tools for showing trendy
Customers mostly do
- Come to the market for exploration (Hoping to find something new). For example, creative food, live concert shopping, meet someone, etc.
- Most of Gen Y use feature ‘check-in’ in social media to mark the place name ‘Artbox market’.
- Take photos (with food, selfie or market’s atmosphere).
- Post photos though personal online space.
- Sit for eating, chatting or listening at the concert.
- Go back with good experience.
On IG :The number of follower about 79k in Oct 2017 (Instagram.com, 2017)
On Facebook: The number of page like about 200k in Oct 2017 (Facebook.com, 2017)
Artbox understands their target customers who are often used social media that will help the market to gain recognition and lead to further sell channels. For instance, decorate market with beautiful light and big banner to be the iconic image for millennials to take photos and post.
What millennials get from going to Artbox Thailand market?
Coming to Artbox market can enhance the shopping experience of generation Y in terms of seeing new kind of market event, creative products and also posting attractive photos on social media. Artbox creates value from changing perception of traditional market to trendy market. Millennials treat trend the important factor in their lives, they can share and give opinion about the newest market expressed through their personal accounts to their online friends and show that they mean trendy people (Ordun. G, 2015). Thus, the market communicates by using online platform to help customers feel more interact with their society. Thereby, millennials can use Artbox Thailand to be the place they can express to their online communities that they are trendy people and the individual experience can be perceived.
Reference lists
- Bolton, R., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., Komarova Loureiro, Y. and Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), pp.245-267.
- Boonlue, T., Briggs, P. and Sillence, E. (2016). Self-Compassion, Psychological Resilience and Social Media Use in Thai Students. Proceedings of the 30th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference, (4), pp.1-8.
- Facebook.com. (2017). Artboxthailand. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/Artboxthailand/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
- Instagram.com. (2017). ARTBOX THAILAND (@artbox_th) • Instagram photos and videos. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/artbox_th/?hl=en [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
- Maslow, A. (2013). Toward a psychology of being. Start Publishing LLC.
- McCarron, K. (2016). ‘Managing millennials’, Tire Business, vol. 33, no. 26, pp. 0010.
- Ordun. G. (2015). Millennial (Gen Y) Consumer Behavior, Their Shopping Preferences and Perceptual Maps Associated With Brand Loyalty. Canadian Social Science, 11 (4), pp.40-55.
- Pornsakulvanich, V. (2017). Personality, attitudes, social influences, and social networking site usage predicting online social support. Computers in Human Behavior, 76, pp.255-262.
- Tripadvisor.com. (2017). Art Box Thailand (Bangkok): Visiting Art Box Thailand (with Photos) – TripAdvisor. [online] Available at: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293916-d8762310-Reviews-Art_Box_Thailand-Bangkok.html#LIGHTBOXVIEW [Accessed 16 Oct. 2017].