In planned shopping centres, department stores normally functioned as standard anchors which are the strongest sources of customer drawing power. Thus, department stores and shopping centres are with mutual benefits rather than competitors. However, the retail property market in Taiwan has long been dominated by large department store chains. Although planned shopping centres had been developed more than a decade in Taiwan, they could not compete with department stores. The market position as ìregionalî and ìsuper-regionalî shopping destinations is still at the hands of department stores. The mainstream department store brands had never become anchors of shopping centres. And facing the competition from newly developed large-scale shopping centres, the existing department store chains also enlarged to equivalent size. Department stores even become a form of retail property rather than retailers targeted by newly launched REITs (2006). Leading department store chains are able to contain strongest retail and service tenants. Consequently, most planned shopping centres in Taiwan still use the same operation pattern of department stores. Consumers can never distinguish the differences between a shopping centre and a department store. The data was collected during July 2006 to March 2007 from 8 urban areas in Taiwan, and included more than 12 large-scale shopping centres and 51 department stores. The detailed analysis focuses on the market positioning, tenant mix strategies, and operational cost structures. The results show the changing consumer behaviour and operational / managerial patterns of retail property in Taiwan that can give some information for recent inflow foreign investments.