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Malls Continue to be Relevant Despite the Doubters
“When malls first emerged on the American retail scene, their value proposition was simple,” Placer.ai says in a new white paper. “By combining specialty retailers and dining brands under one roof and adding anchor tenants to draw in a wide audience, shopping centers offered a venue that both facilitated socializing and provided a convenient one-stop shopping experience.”
However, with the advent of e-commerce, analysts began questioning the relevance of the format. Many called on malls to reinvent themselves in order to survive. Yet, visits haven’t dropped as dramatically as predicted, and in 2022, despite the various economic headwinds, shopping centers throughout the country still attracted hundreds of millions of visits, according to the white paper, titled “Despite Naysayers, Malls Are Maintaining Relevance.”
The white paper breaks down recent location intelligence data to better understand the current state of malls and shopping centers. Placer.ai looked at data from grocery-anchored shopping centers and from the Placer.ai Mall Indexes and analyzed visit numbers, dwell times, daily and weekly visit distribution, and visitor journey information to see how actual visit patterns have changed in recent years.
- ◦Economy
