The ideal place to settle a mall is a central wealthy

location with lots of traffic: close enough to attract locals, easily driven to from nearby towns, and for maximum profit - tourist

accessible. With everything planned just right a mall is far more fruitful than its

individual stores could ever be. But even then, the tides seem to be turning. How can even the perfect mall beat the price and

convenience of Amazon and the data seems to confirm

online shopping is on the rise while more and more malls are withering away

but graphs like this are misleading. The mall is far from dying and

Amazon only confirms this. Before we get there we first need to understand what makes a mall unique

because malls are owned and managed by a single company their incentives are very different from an

individual store. A group of small

local stores is normally the perfect opportunity for a big corporation to come in and steal their business but

To the owner of a mall too much competition means fewer stores and less rent being made so they carefully pick renters that not only

cooperate but actually complement one another this is why malls tend to have a similar set of stores whether you're in

Washington or Wyoming well if there are malls in Wyoming. Each class of mall from the

5-star

to the less than glamorous has a standard meta deck of stores that have been proven to generate more profit together

regardless of where it's located

But the real heart of the mall are the anchor stores, big department stores that draw in the crowds for everyone else. You'd never drive

to a store specifically for

remote-controlled helicopters or seasonal moustache warmers but if one anchor store can lure you into the mall these other shops get your business - and

they're positioned on opposite ends of the building making you walk past

everything else to get between them. The goal of a drive-thru is to get you in and out as quickly as

possible but malls are just the opposite doing anything and everything to

prolong your stay, they want to satisfy your needs so well that it's always just easier to stay a little bit longer so

for every need on maslow's hierarchy

there's a convenient solution not ten steps away. The food court fills you up,

brave deputies stand guard, friends keep you company and your purchases are

psychologically rewarded, companies even seem to think they're providing some sort of profound civic duty. We actually don't call them stores anymore

we call them town squares. But there's an obvious problem with this strategy

more and more people can't or don't want to spend a lot of time shopping

It may take some time but the trend seems clear, physical retail stores are dying and the internet will be the new way to shop

there's one big problem with this theory. Amazon just bought the grocery store Whole Foods for 14 billion

Dollars. If physical retail stores are soon to be a thing of the past,

why are companies like Amazon and Alibaba investing in them? Part of these deals is about getting data for the algorithms but nowhere near

14 billion dollars worth, but if you take a closer look at which stores are closing you may notice a theme. These are

businesses that never

adapted, they cross their fingers that this internet thing would be a fad and kept selling the exact products Amazon is great for

unless I need an HDMI cable this very instant i'm just going to buy one online and

probably even save some money but the average shopper at Whole Foods has a thousand dollars of

Discretionary income to spend a month they want to pay for a premium experience

likewise everything in an Apple store could be sold online but they continue building newer, shinier stores at great expense

Amazon sees this pattern too. Walk in stores aren't dying, old outdated ones are. So what does this mean for malls

the bad news is that many of these dying businesses are actually anchor stores for average middle-class malls

without a Macy's or JCPenney paying rent and attracting visitors many are in serious trouble

But higher-end malls are doing better than ever. The more expensive the store the more customers care about the

experience and the harder it is for the internet to replace. As long as the upper class keeps growing, upscale malls will only do better

and better. So yes there are malls that are dying but malls as a thing aren't dying at all and neither is retail. The best

way to predict the future is to look at where big smart companies are putting their money and companies like

Amazon and Apple are clearly betting on walk-in retail being around for a long time. So you should too

you can shop this holiday season knowing the mall Santa will be back next year and with luck we may even be blessed with Paul Blart 3

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