The “Great Mall Resurgence” in the American retail market

The mall concept as we know it began in 1956 with the opening of the Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota. The multi-store shopping centre steadily grew in popularity in the US, hitting peak popularity in the 1980s.

However, in the past two decades, the American mall has been standing on shaky ground due to factors like the 2008 recession and, more recently, the butterfly effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, visits to all mall types were between 10.7 per cent and 15.3 per cent lower than they had been in 2019. 

Yet, in recent years, things seem to be looking up once more for the American mall once more. 

According to a report released by real estate agency Cushman & Wakefield, in the first quarter of 2024, shopping center vacancy reached 5.4 per cent, marking the lowest it has been in over two decades. 

Inside Retail connected with retail experts Nikki Baird, the vice president of strategy and product at Aptos, a retail technology company, and Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at GlobalData, to gather their thoughts about the potential “Great Mall Resurgence” and what retailers should keep in mind. 

Is the American mall actually making a comeback?

As data collected from Place.ai, a location analytics company, verified, by 2023 visits to the wider shopping centre industry were 2.3 per cent lower than they had been in 2019, with the visit gaps for indoor malls and open-air shopping centres narrowing to 5.8 per cent and 1.0 per cent lower, respectively. 

Besides the removal of pandemic-induced restrictions on brick-and-mortar shopping, there has been a boom in customers returning back to the mall thanks to several factors, like an increase in desire, especially amongst younger shoppers, for in-person experiences. 

As Nikki Baird, the vice president of strategy and product at Aptos, explained to Inside Retail, “There is more intensity among younger generations who are looking to make up for lost time from the pandemic. Young generations are also looking to tap into some of the same experiences they see in nostalgia-fuelled entertainment and that they hear about from their parents. It’s really the convergence of all these things together.”

Baird elaborated, “We see people coming back to real-life experiences and some malls have figured out how to build more experiences into their format, whether that’s dining, activities, movies, or arcades.

Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at GlobalData, also confirmed the popularity of the American mall scene, commenting, “There is a narrative going around that malls are making a comeback. However, the truth is that malls never really went anywhere. They have long since been a very important part of American consumer society and while they’ve had their ups and downs, they remain a popular retail destination.”

While malls remain a popular retail destination, the malls that we experienced in the 50s, 80s, or even the early aughts, highly differ from the mall shopping experience of today. 

As Baird warned, “Retailers need to pick their malls carefully. There is a resurgence but it’s uneven. And it’s complicated by the work-from-home impact on commuting and traffic patterns. Retailers need to be very aware of the demographic patterns and how they’re shifting, and also need to consider the store assortment carefully in light of who is coming to the mall location and why.”

Evidence gathered by Place.ai also confirmed that certain mall types are doing better than others. 

Luxury malls, such as the Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta Georgia, are seeing a steadier rise compared to malls featuring more accessible-priced brands. This is reflected in the fact that nearly 40 per cent of new high-end store openings in 2023 were placed in mall settings, many in Sunbelt states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona. 

Where Lennox Square Mall witnessed an increase in foot traffic of 31.2 per cent year-over-year (YoY) in 2023, other more affordable shopping centres in Georgia saw their visits grow by just 2.7 per cent YoY in the same period.

What should retailers keep in mind regarding the “Great Mall Resurgence”?

While American malls are experiencing increased foot traffic, there are a few things retailers need to be aware of before they rush back in with a new in-mall location. 

For example, one key difference between “malls today compared to yesteryear is that the anchor stores are different,” Saunders pointed out. “In the past, the big department stores were the main attractions. That is less so today. Mall owners must curate an ecosystem of interesting brands – both large and small.”

This can also include pop-ups which come to the advantage of malls and retail brands, like Ikea, alike. 

On February 26, 2024, the Swedish furniture and lifestyle retailer opened a pop-up shop at Rosedale Centre in Roseville, Minnesota and the mall noticed a 12.9 per cent increase in visits during the first week compared to a January 1-7, 2024 baseline. Even by the time the third week of the pop-up rolled around, there was still a noticeable increase in people frequenting the mall prior to the pop-up’s opening. 

As Saunders warned, “Successful malls today must be more than about shopping. They need to integrate leisure and entertainment. In other words, they must provide value for time. Consumers have a lot of choices about where to shop and when they drive to malls, they want more than a functional experience.”

As Baird alluded to earlier, malls that can effectively include non-shopping-specific experiences are more likely to appeal to the modern shopper. 

In fact, data from Placer.ai confirmed this statement, verifying that malls that added in various non-shopping experiences, such as a restaurant or an amusement park, experienced notable increases in foot traffic.

For example, in September 2023, the Chandler Fashion Centre in Arizona opened a 250,000 square-foot Scheels, a sporting goods chain, where visitors could experience attractions like riding on a ferris wheel or visiting an aquarium. Monthly visitation data to the mall showed that the centre experienced a noted spike in foot traffic from October 2023 onward. A sustained increase in foot traffic, with February 2024 visits at a 23.3 per cent higher rate than the same period in 2023.

Another key detail to note about today’s version of the mall shopping experience is that retailers’ have to be much tighter and more focused on store operations and technology. 

As Baird warned retailers, “Omnichannel fulfilment is much harder in a mall environment (vs. having a street-side door), so retailers have to be more careful about the assortment and inventory that goes into the store, as it’s not as easy to get it back out of the store if it’s needed elsewhere.”

“Retailers need to also think about experience and how they can weave that into what may ultimately be a smaller store format,” Baird elaborated.

“That means getting compact about what it takes to enable commerce in stores, so they can spend more of that space on the experience itself, or at least make commerce (the actual buying and paying part) much more frictionless and invisible to the customer, such as mobile point-of-sales devices designed to support more side-by-side customer experiences,” she concluded. 

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