Millennials Tried to Kill the American Mall, but Gen Z Might Save It
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Almost as if their business model is entitled to succeed forever, and millennials are these antagonists hell-bent on destroying it, when in reality they're simply choosing the commerce experience most convenient.
It just continues the narrative that the Boomer generation only loves the free market when it benefits them. I wonder if the silent generation wrote articles claiming the baby boomers are killing public transit by preferring cars/highways.
2. Even if it did imply intent it does not imply moral blame.
It's not neutral at all. I could just as easily say "Boomer-age owners of retail failed to adapt to changing tastes, ergo boomer-age owners of retail killed the mall." Totally different implications based on wording.
Public libraries were killed off by millennials.
Video killed the Radio star. That I can undestand. But saying consumers killed the radio by choosing video? What a weird word choice.
You're implying a consensus that the downvotes readily disprove.
Yes it is. Are we just going to go back and forth like this?
In your shopping bags, take only free samples. The blood of mall retailers is necessary to refresh the gears of war.
What baby boomers boomed, we will destroy. The way of the millennial is economic savagery.
As long as there is one American Mall left standing, there can be no mercy, no patronage to the culture that we inherited.
I would not be surprised if every teen-ager on my block had either their own card, or one that draws on their parent's account in their name. I know the parents at work talk about re-loading their kids' pre-paid cards.
I also got CC before 18. We are anomalies, issuer mistakes, not the norm.
Although I wonder how many parents give kids a card on one of their accounts?
Yes, this is in USA.
not in soley their name
I never stated that they were solely in their name. I stated that their cards draw on their parent's accounts. People have cards issued on their accounts with family members' names on them all the time. It's not uncommon. Every now and then when I log in to one of my bank accounts I get an interstitial asking if there are any family members I'd like to add to the account.
Perhaps it's not common in the circles in which you travel, but I've seen it plenty of times.
When I was 16 I, unsolicited, got a preapproved Nordstrom's Card offer. Not surprising to me since I'd been sending off for high fashion catalogs since I was very interested in the sartorial arts (in addition to computing). I accepted the card, they sent it, and I started using it. Mostly at the discount Rack, but also at the main store when they had clearances. It wasn't any more costly than any other discount place or thrift store but was of vastly better quality and the personalized service was simply exquisite.
I paid the bill off each month without delay. This offer was followed then by a Neiman Marcus card, and countless other luxury brand cards. None back then wanted a SSN or credit check. They knew I had good taste. Sending those cards to me was a smart move. I still like these stores. My career as a fashion designer was very short lived though. Sad. I do OK as a developer.
But holy crap, don't fog up the windows of your Volkswagen in the parking lot, or Officer Maglite will tap on your window and threaten to call your parents.
The numbers showed that Gen-X bought stuff, while millennials just hung out, looked at merchandise in the stores, and then bought online.
The short-term result was to try to keep sales to Gen-X and above from eroding. The long-term result was that millennials thought malls were boring and dumb.
But Wall Street doesn't care about long-term results, and backs whatever pony wins the race to the next quarter.
I live in a sales tax free state (New Hampshire) and I happen to be right on the border with Massachusetts which has a sales tax. I can tell you on any given weekend the mall is PACKED with millennials! Not even just on holiday season.
Now that I have a kid I find myself going every weekend since my 3 year old loves the indoor playground area and walking around all the stores.
Anecdotally, I suspect people dislike of malls will change quickly once online stores are forced to start collecting sales tax in non-nexus locations. I don't agree with it (it's cross border commerce and states shouldn't be able to force businesses to remit tax to them if I don't live there) but it's coming.
Also, truth be told the millennial group is far too large. I am an old millennial and I share very little in common with the younger millennials.
Edit: also, I agree with some of the other commenters. Maybe it is different now but I couldn't get a credit card until I turned 18 and even then I had to have my parent co-sign. Though debit cards are easier to get, I think.
Edit 2: Fixed an ambiguous sentence where I was accidentally switching from a consumer voice to a business voice.
Considering the current state of online shopping, I'm not surprised.
What was supposed to be a golden age of universal consumer choice has become an AI-optimized circus of hucksters and flying monkey poo.
I used to buy almost everything online, including groceries. This year, I can count on one hand the number of online purchases I've made. And with the exception of two from Amazon, they've all been from mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar stores.
[Edit: Corrected spelling of "monkey poo."]
It was a bold strategy, but unfortunately teaching people that your listings are not serious and should be immediately ignored didn't work out in the end. I'm not sure they can pin that on "millennials."
A YouTube influencer can tell me what brand of cosmetics works for them, but they can't pick out something just for me. I can't smell a bar of soap online, I can't feel the texture of a fabric, I can't see how a watch looks on my wrist. Amazon might offer millions of books, but a lot of people prefer a choice of a few hundred books that are all excellent. Brick-and-mortar retail is qualitatively different to online retail, it satisfies different practical and emotional needs and there are still plenty of opportunities for growth.
In spite of developing that stock that looks nice, I don’t think it is enough to keep those stores afloat. People might walk in and look at that stuff, they might use the store as a “leisure” opportunity, but they don’t necessarily buy much. After all, a lot of those vinyl records and Kikkerland stuff is available online for much cheaper. Even if visitors do make a purchase from the brick-and-mortar shop, are enough of them doing it to pay the high rents on mall spaces?
One large non-mall bookstore in my town went the route of moving away from selling purely books towards highlighting more attractive items. When even this was not enough to actually make money, they stayed afloat by turning a whole floor of the shop into a membership-based coworking space. Mall bookstores don’t have that luxury, again due to very constrained space.
If a store can actually develop expertise in its inventory and make suggestions that are actually good, and create a great experience around its merchandise then they can thrive.
I doubt most will be able to execute on this.
Reading is such a personal thing that the “best books” for you are probably not the best books for other people. When tastes are so disparate, when the cultural space has fragmented so greatly, then a shop cannot succeed by stocking just a certain set of books. They need an ability to sell to everyone of whatever taste, and online bookshops have an advantage there that malls don’t.
I’d love to see an article about what millennials actually wanted and why the mall didn’t address it.
I’m in my adult life now and don’t have a lot of free time. The last time I went into a mall (6 months ago?), I went to three different stores to buy a pair of training shoes. The stores were kind of empty, yet, the staff couldn’t care to help me at all.
Between the time driving to and from and walking into each of these stores, waiting for someone to help me, only to learn they don’t have my size in what I want, I wasted at least 2 hours.
I didn’t kill any mall. If these stores provided a better experience and actually tried to be competitive the slightest, it would be worth my while.
Instead, these places offer a third rate experience. You don’t even try to be competitive and then you blame your failure on a whole generation of people. If anything, you’ve put the nail in your own coffin. I’ll buy from Adidas directly or use Amazon.
And teens need brick and mortar clothing stores because their bodies, clothing needs and tastes are changing.
As a man in my 30s, malls just don't have much to offer. Certainly I'm not going to go to socialize. I don't dress up a lot so I can mostly just order jeans and such online. I have better ways to find books and music. And a lot of mall clothes seem geared to teens, logically enough, so just not very useful to me.
When I was at a brick-and-mortar clothing store, I picked a plain gray shirt that fit me well and asked the staff how I could get 10 of these. They looked at me like I was an alien speaking Turkish. Amazon said "sure thing pal". So that's that.
Just face it, you did kill the mall with this consumer attitude.
Now if you don't care about malls and you're fine with them going extinct, keep it up. Don't act like you're not responsible. What you buy and how you buy it shapes the world around you.
I don't personally care much for visiting malls, but then again in many pointless cities across the severely underpopulated United States, malls are the only "public space" there is.
Most millennials probably grew up in malls and would prefer they survived if given a choice, but it's hard to support them when they're filled with overpriced clothing stores. Maybe it's just nostalgia clouding my judgement, but I remember malls having a lot more variety in the '90s.
I don't see what's specific to Millenials here. In 2018, most millennials finally have jobs, after completing their ten-year-degrees in bozonomics. Same for the X'ers, except a larger part of them has given up on leaving their homes at this point. Only the Generation Z still has time to waste at the mall. That doesn't mean they're buying much, they're mostly teenagers. Hence, the mall remains doomed.
Both of my kids are teenagers. They and most of their peers see the hyper sensitivity in millennials as something strangely fascinating.