
Millennials Tried to Kill the American Mall, but Gen Z Might Save It - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-25/are-u-s-malls-dead-not-if-gen-z-keeps-shopping-the-way-they-do
======
ghobs91
I might be reaching here, but it's interesting that the largely Baby Boomer
owners of physical retail use language like "millennials _killed_ the mall".

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.

~~~
esoterica
Why are you so offended by the use of the word kill? Where does that imply
entitlement or the assignation of moral blame? Millenials stopped going to
malls, ergo millenials killed the mall. That's just a neutral statement of
fact.

~~~
omni
> Millenials stopped going to malls, ergo millenials killed the mall. That's
> just a neutral statement of fact.

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.

~~~
EGreg
I guess Millennials killed every single thing that they stopped using.

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.

~~~
esoterica
That's a pretty standard figure of speech. Why do you think it's a weird word
choice?

~~~
majewsky
> That's a pretty standard figure of speech.

You're implying a consensus that the downvotes readily disprove.

------
vnchr
Once more unto the breach, dear millennials, once more. This coming Generation
would sweep away our victory, should we relent in commercial battle.

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.

------
imgabe
So they survey 13-19 years olds, who mostly don't have credit cards, and find
that they prefer shopping in physical stores. Does anyone expect that to
continue once they no longer need to ask their parents' permission to shop
online?

~~~
reaperducer
Plenty of 13 to 19-year-olds have credit cards. I got my first credit card
when I was 17 (I applied the week after I got my Social Security number [they
weren't assigned at birth back then]).

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.

~~~
dmoy
A tiny minority of teenagers have credit cards. Like maybe 10%.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Most would have a debit card, though, which is not notably different in terms
of ability to purchase things online.

------
tracer4201
Millennial here. I didn’t try to kill the American Mall. This article has such
a garbage headline.

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.

~~~
njharman
An individual millennial != millenials. One is a irrelevent single data point
from which no genratiles may be stated. The other, an aggregate providing
probalities of traits. And thus basis for generalities.

~~~
throwaway12JpuH
The key word is "tried". No one, alone or in a group, is "trying" to "kill"
the American Mall.

------
heimidal
It doesn’t seem that shocking to me that teenagers and young adults spend more
time in shopping malls than people who are in there 20s and 30s.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Millennial headlines are somewhere near Florida Man headlines. Also wait till
Gen Z is knee deep in debt for the reversal headline.

~~~
kodz4
Gen Alpha will have fixed the News media by then.

------
throwaway2016a
What are they going to blame millennials on next? We just go and kill
everything!

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.

~~~
dominotw
I am in IL. I had to pay taxes on online purchases during tax filing.

~~~
throwaway2016a
As you should but it is a bit of an honor system and a lot of people don't
even know you are supposed to do it. I see tons of Massachusetts plates at the
mall and I guarantee you most of them won't be writing a check to the MA
Department of Revenue. The process of having the seller withhold the tax is
much more effective in getting people to actually pay and that is the system a
lot of states that rely on sales tax are pushing for.

------
h2odragon
Didn't the mall owners kill them? "Going to the mall" was a thing for Gen X;
then younger people were explicitly unwelcome... Did anybody think kicking the
customers out of your store was a good marketing strategy?

~~~
reaperducer
Store owners felt the pressure from online retailers and optimized the
shopping experience.

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.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Malls have been pretty lame for me since mall bookstores stopped being a
thing.

------
gthtjtkt
If by "millennials" you mean "Amazon", then sure.

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.

------
reaperducer
_three-quarters of them said going to a brick-and-mortar store was a better
experience than online_

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."]

------
PunksATawnyFill
Let's stop with the stupid labels already.

------
trophycase
AKA: "Mall owners rested on their laurels while online shopping arrived. Those
that didn't go bankrupt now realize they need to improve"

~~~
Mediterraneo10
How do you improve when you don’t have much room for stock? Mall bookstores
were usually extremely constrained for space. There was no way they could
compete with an online bookshop that has a whole warehouse full of books, and
which can deliver the product straight to do your door in a couple of days.
The same could be said for mall CD or DVD shops, with the added pressure that
physical media sales dropped drastically as everyone switched to buying
online, streaming or YouTube.

~~~
achenatx
I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are.
Amazon initially did great at this. But now there is so much crap it is
becoming difficult to tell what is good.

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.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are.

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.

------
gridlockd
_" Around 95 percent of them visited a physical shopping center in a three-
month period in 2018, as opposed to just 75 percent of millennials and 58
percent of Gen X, according to an International Council of Shopping Centers
study."_

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.

------
taurath
You can tell from what perspective this article is written, and who the
audience is: boomer retail investors and retail industry people.

I’d love to see an article about what millennials actually wanted and why the
mall didn’t address it.

------
noonespecial
If Amazon reviews and search gets any more useless, I might join them.

------
austincheney
You can probably guess who in the comments is a millennial by the level of
bitching about sensitivity and labels.

Both of my kids are teenagers. They and most of their peers see the hyper
sensitivity in millennials as something strangely fascinating.

