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MRKT 657 — Customer Insights
Instructor: Dr. Ashesh Mukherjee
McGill University, Summer 2026
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Complexe Desjardins sits at the heart of downtown Montreal's Quartier des Spectacles, connected underground to the Place-des-Arts metro station and the Place des Arts complex. It is a mixed-use property rather than a pure shopping centre: three office towers and a four-star hotel rise above a retail podium. Retail is concentrated on the ground level and the underground level wrapped around a vast central atrium, La Grande-Place, that hosts events year-round. The tenant mix is mid-market and convenience-oriented — the ground floor features clothing and jewelry stores along with off-price apparel retailers such as Winners, while the lower level focuses on daily essentials including IGA, SAQ, a flower shop near the metro entrance, and a large food court.
The customer base divides roughly into four groups: the ~10,000 office employees in the towers (about half aged 18–34); transit commuters passing through, drawn especially by the food court near the metro; downtown residents and students (~32,000 residents within 1 km and ~188,000 students within 5 km); and culture-seekers and tourists drawn to the Quartier des Spectacles. In total, nearly 40,000 people pass through each day.
Its closest competitors are not only other downtown malls in Montréal's underground network (Eaton Centre, Place Montréal Trust) but also the broader retail corridor along Sainte-Catherine Street. Compared with that denser, more fashion-led environment, Complexe Desjardins competes as a multifunctional urban space — anchored by its large atrium, central fountain, event programming at La Grande-Place, and its Quartier des Spectacles location.
a) Entrances and decompression zones. Complexe Desjardins has two main street entrances (Ste-Catherine and René-Lévesque), both fronted by floor-to-ceiling glass, plus underground entrances linked to the metro and Place des Arts. The glass increases visual permeability — pulling in daylight, letting passers-by see the activity inside, and lowering the perceived risk of entering.
The entrances differ in an important way, though. Underhill (2009) argues shoppers need a decompression zone just inside the door where they shift from "street mode" to "shopping mode." The René-Lévesque entrance opens into the Desjardins office-tower lobby, so its decompression zone is occupied by an office function and primes visitors as workers, not shoppers. By contrast, the Sainte-Catherine entrance's high ceiling and open space create a stronger sense of arrival and draw visitors forward.
La Maison Lavande reinforces this with a calm, open storefront (pale textured wall, driftwood, dried lavender) that acts as a store-level decompression zone, lowering sensory load before any selling begins.
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La Maison Lavande storefront
b) Layout, traffic flow, and store-level exposure. Because stores line the perimeter around the open core of La Grande-Place, the layout is easy to read — long sightlines lower cognitive load and search cost (Bitner, 1992). The trade-off is exposure: a clear perimeter ring lets shoppers bypass stores, whereas a more enclosed path would route them past more storefronts. This matters because the two retail levels attract different mindsets: the ground level (connected to Sainte-Catherine) draws browsers, while the underground level (metro + food court) draws the heaviest but most task-oriented, time-pressured traffic. The food court compounds this — sitting by the metro with a quick escalator exit, diners can enter, eat, and leave without passing storefronts, so the busiest amenity generates little cross-shopping. This contrasts with IKEA's forced winding path or the "vertical pull" of upper-level food courts; the same principle appears inside Winners, whose checkout queue winds through impulse merchandise. Individual tenants can still capture undirected traffic — the Lotto-Québec booth, placed where the food court meets La Grande-Place and visible from levels above, gets in-path exposure ideal for an impulse product.
Lotto-Québec booth
Conversely, Bellucci, an Italian restaurant at a near dead-end side entrance, overcomes its location with a projecting glass-fronted dining volume, striped awning, and terrace that provide visibility and social proof.
c) Spatial cues, empty space, and retail positioning. From the Sainte-Catherine entrance, a high ceiling and broad space guide movement toward La Grande-Place and its dramatic sculptural ceiling. Bitner's servicescape framework notes such spatial and symbolic cues shape inferences before any product engagement; here the architecture reads as monumental and institutional — partly because the complex was conceived in the 1970s as a government-anchored civic project. That extensive negative space once signaled prestige, but today the mid-market tenant mix can appear visually weak within such a formal setting. Baker et al. (2002) note shoppers build store value from design, ambient, and social cues together. Bellucci uses a full-height walk-in wine cellar and an open staircase behind tall glass to put the restaurant's life on display; Élysée Fourrures uses controlled scarcity — generous space around an antique table and loosely spaced fur racks — to signal a premium, curated positioning; Winners does the opposite with dense racks signalling abundance and bargains. St-Jean Joaillier is the cautionary case: many glass cases at once and an office desk with a computer visible first from the concourse make a fine jeweller feel functional rather than luxurious.
Bellucci restaurant design