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In the 1980's people wrote about malls as cultural centers, as temples to shopping. Now, they're dying.
Many observers are speculating about the growing trend of so-called dead malls: once-flourishing, large retail spaces that now have a high vacancy rate, low numbers of pedestrian traffic, or the lack of an "anchor" store (typically a department chain). Is it because of economic recession, or stagnant middle-class wages and growing income inequality? Or has the death of these malls been hastened by the rapid growth of online shopping?
It's difficult to say, but the dead mall phenomenon is becoming a cultural item of interest -- for retail historians, urban explorers and documentarians alike. We may read about dead malls in The New York Times or The Atlantic, but film footage can say much more than words.
Is Amazon to blame?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:07PM (1 child)
Reminds me of a tale I heard some time ago, could be fiction but I found it interesting.
A local car dealership that sold expensive sports cars was successful while many rival dealerships in the same area were failing. The owner attributed his success to the fact that his business never shunned anyone who came in: often teenagers would come in, clearly with no ability to purchase the products (they just want to drive a cool car for a bit) but it did not matter to this dealer. They got to test drive just like any other prospective buyer.
Later, some of those teenagers become financially successful people who drive expensive cars. Where will they go to buy one? It won't be the dealership that told them to fuck off when they were younger, that's for sure.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday April 26 2017, @04:51PM
I use to do that. At the high end car dealers they would entertain you and let you test drive most things (never did get to take out a BMW Z8 or MB SLR) while the regular ones would often judge you and treat you like trash. What is interesting is that now as a fairly well off professional those same low end car dealers still will blow me off. For example when I had to replace my previous car I was driving around in my beater jeep for a couple of weeks and found that this still is the case. At the near by Maserati, BMW, Mercedes, and Aston Martin dealers they were happy to show me the car I was interested in and then would suggest that I not only take that one out for a test drive but that I consider some other much more expensive and/or fun car and bring that around as well. At the regular dealerships I would actively get steered away from the car I wanted to see and was often told that they didn't let people test drive those cars. So in the end I bought a used BMW from the Maserati dealer as that was the nicest car with the features I wanted in my price range that I saw.
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