It seems like not too long ago when the mall would be packed on a Saturday afternoon—parents with their kids, groups of friends, a couple out on a date, shopping and browsing through store after store. But today, the shopping mall is not quite what it used to be. Many parts of the traditional mall structure have declined in recent years due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and growing competition with other malls and big businesses. The rise of e-commerce, too, has eliminated many old mall standards, but it has also opened doors to new business opportunities and changed the shopping experience.
COVID-19 put many non-essential retailers out of business, and malls shared much of the same decline. With health concerns rising, malls adopted new online methods of shopping to allow consumers to buy products from the safety of their homes, and stores have adopted hybrid models of shopping such as BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store). The pandemic also left its mark on the in-person shopping experience. Once malls started reopening to the public, high-tier malls recovered quickly because they invested in experiential attractions. Outdoor dining, for example, became popular to manage the risk of COVID-19 spreading. Meanwhile, low-tier malls, especially enclosed ones, couldn’t keep up with the rapid change, and many were driven to permanent closure.
Nowadays, shopping malls compete more on foot traffic (or “dwell time”—how long visitors stay) as opposed to quick transactional visits, which take place mostly online anyway. High-tier malls, for instance, own much of the competition for their experiential and interactive investments—canopy courses, trampoline parks, cinemas, fitness centers, dining halls—which are more likely to win foot traffic than retail chains alone. Property developers have also worked on integrating apartments, hotels, and office space into the mall in order to accumulate more foot traffic, which has proven to be successful. They’ve done similar work to underperforming and vacant malls by entirely converting the properties into these more viable spaces.
In general, malls have shifted their focus from selling apparel and goods to providing interactive services that cannot be replicated online. They depend on foot traffic now more than ever to stay running despite the growth in e-commerce and seem to be doing quite well. Physical stores are still very much a part of the mall experience, but now there are omnichannel options for consumers to shop quickly and conveniently. New attractions are opening up and drive people to the mall every day for fun, leisure, good sales, and a good time.
