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Bloomberg
Mall owners have sung the praises of “experiential retail,†touting it as the saviour of a sector battered by store closures and the shift to online shopping. It turns out the buzz may be a bit overblown.
A study by location-data firm Thasos Group shows that malls with a Tesla showroom, Apple store, Eataly or Starbucks Roastery don’t have much of an edge over centres without those shops. In fact, these properties trailed their more-traditional peers in foot traffic up until the end of last year.
Thasos used mobile-phone location data to assess foot traffic at 144 “experiential†malls. In October 2017, visitation at these centres was down 11 percent from the prior year, compared with an 8.1 percent decline at other malls. Landlords are spending billions to make over their properties in hopes of drawing shoppers at a time when everything can be bought online.