The shopping mall – A thing of the past?
A quick walk around many towns and cities central shopping areas will quickly bring on a sense of melancholy for the avid shopper. The effects of the global economic recession have hit the high street and shopping malls hard. Where there was once row upon row of thriving retail outlets, attracting shoppers through their doors in their droves, there are now the occasional shops surrounded by empty premises with faded signs and a sad pile of unanswered mail lying on the uncarpeted floor behind the door.
It is easy to assume that the global financial meltdown, the after-effects of which are still being keenly felt now, is the main culprit for the seeming demise of the shopping mall and high street. Yet in truth, as much as finance has played a part, there is an equally important social event happening that is making the mall almost obsolete and that is the stunning boom in Internet shopping.
A good example of how much of an impact the Internet has had on shopping habits is in the UK. In 2001, across the United Kingdom, there were six million people who used the Internet at some point during that year to purchase an item online. Ten years later, that number had increased to 32 million people, over half the population of the country.
Since 2008, when the British public spent £30 billion on online purchases for shopping, there has been a significant annual growth in the amount spent, to £38 billion in 2009, £42 billion in 2010 and then an astonishing rise to £68 billion in 2011. That amount is set to rise further in 2012 with predictions that the UK consumer will spend around £77 billion online this year and experts reckon by 2022, over £123 billion will be spent.
Yet this is at odds with the feeling that people are cutting back in times of austerity. Surely, if people were cutting back on their spending, then the amount they would be spending online would shrink in the same way that spending in shops and malls has fallen. The statistics clearly show that this is not the case, so why could this be happening?
In truth, what is happening is less rejection of the shopping mall as a thing of the past, but more an acceptance that our way of life is now radically changing, perhaps more quickly than at any time in the recent past. Technology combined with the pressures of work and modern family living means that the time a person once had to spend wandering around the local shops, is now no longer so readily available.
The digital revolution has ushered in an era when the modern consumer is not restricted by the boundaries of their local area. The Internet offers a truly global marketplace where a consumer can not only find the item that they want more cheaply elsewhere, but also in a range of different designs, tastes, colours, fabrics etc.
In addition to being cheaper, the Internet also has the advantage of being immediate. The huge growth in smartphone ownership is partly what is fuelling this increasing trend to buy items online. Now there are apps available that allow the user to read the bar code of an item and then find where they can buy the item more cheaply online, or even in the local area. A click of the button or two later, a person can have bought and paid for the same item they have seen in the shop, only they have paid a lot less for it.
There is also a cultural aspect at work here too. For many years shopping malls were not just a place where people came together to shop and eat, they also provided a focal point for many peoples social lives. Groups of teens would regularly arrange to meet “in town” or “at the mall” to spend their free time together there and shops would make a good trade out of this particular demographic.
Nowadays, teens are as likely to be arranging where to meet on their phone, keeping in constant contact with their peers and friends via instant messaging services, telephone and even video conferencing. As such, the need for a focal point where everyone could meet centrally is now eliminated; society does not require it thanks to the advancement of technology.
Yet it would be wrong to assume that technology and the Internet has sounded the death knell of the shopping mall. In truth, there is plenty of space for both to co-exist and indeed, many would argue that there is a symbiotic relationship between the two and that the strengths of buying online are the weaknesses of buying in the high street, yet the strengths of high street shopping are the weaknesses of buying online.
There are certain things where high street shopping is still hugely popular. Many people still prefer to buy items such as shoes from the mall as they need to be a comfortable fit. Online shopping cannot offer this. Also you cannot touch and feel a piece of clothing to test its quality or how it feels against the skin online, yet you can in a shop.
In addition, many mall-based shops are now realising the value of the Internet and are adapting their range of products and services to take advantage of it, offering to order items for customers online if they do not have it in stock for example.
So to conclude; the shopping mall as not quite a thing of the past just yet, however the falling sales of shops and empty premises means that the age of the online shopper has led to a real need for malls to adapt. This is not just about how they look and function, but also in terms of how they can improve the range of items that they offer and to also ensure that they price their good competitively.
As Mark Newton-Jones, CEO of Shop Direct Group stated “The past decade has seen a transformation in the way people want to shop,” and while many still prefer to take the trip down to the local mall, increasingly people are finding all they could ever want, at a better price, online.
