Published on ShanghaiDaily.com (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/)
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2008/200812/20081223/article_385470.htm
Illustration by Zhou Tao
Illustration by Zhou Tao
Pall of boredom hangs over the American mall
Created: 2008-12-23
CLOSE your eyes and you could be in any mall, anywhere.
At each end is an overstuffed department store with roving fragrance spritzers and makeup artists.
In between are children's stores showing pink clothes on the left, blue on the right, interspersed with teen clothing stores where the lighting is dim and the salespeople are rail-thin.
Hungry? Don't fret: Somewhere in this mall are warm cinnamon buns.
That's the problem. According to new Wharton research, consumers are aggravated and uninspired by the sameness and predictability of shopping malls, which for decades epitomized America's consumer society.
It's not exactly the news mall developers want to hear, given the already difficult holiday retail environment.
In their fifth annual survey of consumer dissatisfaction, Wharton's Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative and The Verde Group, a research consultancy specializing in customer retention, found that 80 percent of shoppers had at least one problem during a trip to the mall in the prior month.
The two most frequent complaints cited in the survey are first, a lack of anything new or exciting at the mall and second, a limited selection of restaurants. These criticisms were each cited by 35 percent of those surveyed.
The third most-mentioned problem, cited by 28 percent of respondents, was that too many of the stores carry the same merchandise.
While mentioned less frequently than sameness as a problem, survey respondents told researchers they feel parking is the most serious problem they face on a visit to the mall.
"If the mall is boring and the infrastructure is not that great, it's easy to see why people are stepping back and skipping the holiday buying frenzy" that is normal for this time of year, says Wharton marketing professor Stephen Hoch, who is director of the retail initiative.
Today's mall shoppers are underwhelmed by the nation's 1,200 enclosed and open-air lifestyle centers filled with chain stores designed specifically for success in the mall environment.
"People go to the mall and nothing stands out or makes the experience fun or exciting," Hoch adds. "There is no sense of discovery. Nothing catches the eye. It's the same restaurants and the same stores in every mall."
Hoch predicts as much as 10 percent of the nation's retail infrastructure could disappear by the time the current recession ends.
Because there has been a massive investment in malls and in the chain stores that fill them, Hoch notes, it will be difficult to recast this retail infrastructure to provide a better sense of "discovery" for shoppers.
One major obstacle: Some of the abandoned space is likely to be created by the departure of large anchor department stores with many entrances that are not easily transformed into new uses.
Despite shoppers' dissatisfaction with the sameness of shopping malls, Hoch suggests it is unlikely that local independent retailers with niche concepts will find a place in malls.
"People are complaining about the same-old, same-old, but I think it's not clear that mall shoppers are the most creative group out there. They do go for predictability," he says, adding that mom and pop establishments are usually highly specialized destination stores that would not benefit from paying high mall rents to capture sales from walk-by traffic.
"Malls need to figure out what to do, because there is going to be more and more excess space as chains close down their less profitable outlets," he says. "There's going to be a lot of space in the mall that is dark. Malls have to be very concerned because if parts of their properties go dark, it can (look like) an abandoned neighborhood."
(Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, http://knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved.)
At each end is an overstuffed department store with roving fragrance spritzers and makeup artists.
In between are children's stores showing pink clothes on the left, blue on the right, interspersed with teen clothing stores where the lighting is dim and the salespeople are rail-thin.
Hungry? Don't fret: Somewhere in this mall are warm cinnamon buns.
That's the problem. According to new Wharton research, consumers are aggravated and uninspired by the sameness and predictability of shopping malls, which for decades epitomized America's consumer society.
It's not exactly the news mall developers want to hear, given the already difficult holiday retail environment.
In their fifth annual survey of consumer dissatisfaction, Wharton's Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative and The Verde Group, a research consultancy specializing in customer retention, found that 80 percent of shoppers had at least one problem during a trip to the mall in the prior month.
The two most frequent complaints cited in the survey are first, a lack of anything new or exciting at the mall and second, a limited selection of restaurants. These criticisms were each cited by 35 percent of those surveyed.
The third most-mentioned problem, cited by 28 percent of respondents, was that too many of the stores carry the same merchandise.
While mentioned less frequently than sameness as a problem, survey respondents told researchers they feel parking is the most serious problem they face on a visit to the mall.
"If the mall is boring and the infrastructure is not that great, it's easy to see why people are stepping back and skipping the holiday buying frenzy" that is normal for this time of year, says Wharton marketing professor Stephen Hoch, who is director of the retail initiative.
Today's mall shoppers are underwhelmed by the nation's 1,200 enclosed and open-air lifestyle centers filled with chain stores designed specifically for success in the mall environment.
"People go to the mall and nothing stands out or makes the experience fun or exciting," Hoch adds. "There is no sense of discovery. Nothing catches the eye. It's the same restaurants and the same stores in every mall."
Hoch predicts as much as 10 percent of the nation's retail infrastructure could disappear by the time the current recession ends.
Because there has been a massive investment in malls and in the chain stores that fill them, Hoch notes, it will be difficult to recast this retail infrastructure to provide a better sense of "discovery" for shoppers.
One major obstacle: Some of the abandoned space is likely to be created by the departure of large anchor department stores with many entrances that are not easily transformed into new uses.
Despite shoppers' dissatisfaction with the sameness of shopping malls, Hoch suggests it is unlikely that local independent retailers with niche concepts will find a place in malls.
"People are complaining about the same-old, same-old, but I think it's not clear that mall shoppers are the most creative group out there. They do go for predictability," he says, adding that mom and pop establishments are usually highly specialized destination stores that would not benefit from paying high mall rents to capture sales from walk-by traffic.
"Malls need to figure out what to do, because there is going to be more and more excess space as chains close down their less profitable outlets," he says. "There's going to be a lot of space in the mall that is dark. Malls have to be very concerned because if parts of their properties go dark, it can (look like) an abandoned neighborhood."
(Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, http://knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved.)
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