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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: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:32PM (7 children)
1: seeing the products in person isn't as much of a pull as the malls thought it was. I don't think I've ever looked at something and gone "You know, this might interest me, but I'd really prefer to be able to see it physically first." Maybe I'm weird.
You're not "weird" (well, you may be, but that's beside the point here) -- but things have changed radically in marketing of products and delivery over the generations.
Before Amazon, buying a product locally wasn't just about "seeing the product in person" -- it was about convenience. If you ordered something from the Sears Catalogue (which existed since the 1800s), you might have to wait a few weeks for them to ship it. And then if you accidentally ordered the wrong thing or they shipped the wrong thing or it was broken, you'd be dealing with more days or weeks of waiting to deal with that.
If you go to a store, you avoid a lot of those problems and/or resolve them quickly. Amazon's ubiquitous super-fast shipping has changed all of that, making speedy mail-order service that you'd use to pay a huge premium actually pretty affordable.
But of course what made the Sears Catalogue exciting generations ago was the fact that you had more variety. You could get stuff that you couldn't find locally, or which you'd have to drive around or call around for hours trying to find.
The mall promised to save you that trouble by housing a variety of businesses under one roof. It was mostly about convenience of access to the products.
But there also used to be a greater interest in "in-person" product marketing. Old-school department stores used to set up displays of new products, which offered to let you try them out or have a free sample (or whatever, depending on product type). Salespeople would discuss new features with you. New product releases were often an event, because -- frankly -- there were such more limited options back then. A new type of toothpaste could even be a sales event; nowadays, when each brand offers a dozen varieties, and there are a dozen brands, would anyone really care about some salesperson trying to convince you to try another one within over a hundred existing options? If, on the other hand, there were only 3 or 4 normal options for toothpaste, suddenly a new product release has a lot more interest -- and the sample at the store could be helpful.
While store displays and free samples and trials still exist, they just don't have the value they once did. Hence -- and here we get to the final issue with the death of in-person shopping -- everything is generally "in a box" at stores. It seems to me even a few decades ago that there were more "display models" out for you to try something or at least look it over in some detail; now, you're just shopping for an anonymous item shipped in a big box, which is often 1 out of 100 different models/varieties of that sort of thing.
So yeah, I agree with you: today there are fewer and fewer things I actually care about seeing in person while shopping. Hence malls (and many retail stores) become less and less useful as years go by.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:10PM (3 children)
But of course what made the Sears Catalogue exciting generations ago was the fact that you had more variety. You could get stuff that you couldn't find locally, or which you'd have to drive around or call around for hours trying to find.
I like that point, there's a lot of talk about internet killed this and that, but its worth pointing out that Radio Shack (a common mall store) is dead but Digikey and Mouser (and a few others) are basically the Sears Catalogue of electronic parts online and AFAIK business is booming for them.
Supposedly in the old days, old men at old fashioned hardware stores gave personal service the way parametric search does today online. "My horse wagon wheel is squealing" and next thing you know you're holding a tub of muskrat grease or something. Today you go online, I need a SMD DC blocking capacitor, 0402 physical size, resonant frequency above 2.6 GHz, blammo here's a list you'll have a pick-n-place spool of any of them by airmail tomorrow morning if not faster. And its all automated and incredibly cheap.
Its a pity Sears didn't go that strategy for home hardware and stuff. Or radio shack should have tried.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by draconx on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
I don't know how these guys manage to deliver products so consistently fast. We recently ordered some parts on Digikey for our office. It arrived on the 2nd business day after we ordered it. Through no action of our own, Digikey apologised for the delay and refunded the $8 shipping cost.
This is how you get customers that are happy to give you money, over and over again.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:06PM
You must live "far away" because I'm close enough for tomorrow morning. I believe they claim anything ordered before 8pm local is shipped that day. I think the whole thing is robots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:05PM
While there are a couple shitty hardware stores around that give 'condescending' service, if you don't look like 'their kind' of people, we also have one in my town that is ~1/8 the size of a Home Depot, but has about the same number of employees. They give customized service to each customer, know where almost all the stock in their store is (occasionally you get people who are from another department helping you out, and if they can't help you, they try and find a proper employee of that department, or will check inventory if that fails.) Their parking lot is almost never less than half full, they seem to make plenty of money, the employees are always cheerful and helpful, and they have a diverse staff of multiple ethnicities all knowledgeable in the diverse fields of hardware they carry.
While I don't believe our town could support dozens or hundreds of similiar stores, I do believe that same level of care and commitment needs to followed by more stores if they expect to survive the current online purchasing trend. The issues of inventory and cost are problematic, but as the store in question shows, people are willing to pay a 10-50 percent markup if they can find the item same-day and get the right tool for the job, but *IF* and only *IF* they feel the experience was worth it. If the experience dealing with the store is bad, people will only go there for discounted goods, which in turn is a self-perpetuating cycle into oblivion, just like happened with Radio Shack, Montgomery's, Circuit City, Best, Good Guys, Computer City, etc in the 90s-00s.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:52AM (1 child)
Back about 100 years ago, you could literally buy a house in the Sears catalog. The program ran from 1908 to 1940,and the kits were usually delivered by boxcar. Some people would construct them like a barn raising, while others hired local contractors. There were hundreds of styles, and many had modern conveniences like central heating. These houses were high quality, and many still exist today.
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(Score: 2) by nethead on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:34AM
Yep, the Craftsman. For $800,000 you can have one too!
http://www.windermere.com/listing/WA/Seattle/106-NW-50th-St-98107/55192797 [windermere.com]
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
(Score: 2) by nethead on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:31AM
A Thomas Organ store, couldn't have a real mall without some dweeb blasting out the Laurence Welk from his store.
To be honest, some of those organs were pretty cool considering the tech of the day.
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?