07-16-2017, 01:21 AM
I'm guessing that the ideal time in which to build a shopping mall was in the 1960s, when:
1. The target customers (the white middle class -- and I remember when one of the secret rules of retailing was to remember that blacks and whatever Hispanic population was large in the area were shoplifters and not shoppers) were flush with cash if they had white-collar jobs or skilled trades. Second incomes (by middle-class wives) became common and spurred luxury spending
2. Plenty of green-field real estate was available for shopping malls and the parking lots that they needed. Taxes were low by current standards.
3. College education was at its cheapest, so college graduates, even if they had low-paying jobs at least did not generally have college debt
4. Mortgage costs were at historic real lows because of inflation that devalued loan balances and because of low interest rates. Houses were spacious (much more spacious than apartments of Millennial adults with job titles similar to those of Silent adults of like age lived in) and thus enticed people to buy more stuff because they could store more stuff.
5. People taking commutes into the core cities for work didn't want to take another trip downtown to shop.
6. Media were sparser and more concentrated. There were three network channels in less-favored cities (let us say Fort Wayne), three network channels and an independent station in Indianapolis, and three network and two independent channels in Chicago (NET and in turn PBS did not supply advertising). Except for regional department stores as anchors the malls had the same stores whether they were in Arlington, Texas or Arlington, Virginia and thus could exploit national advertising. Middle0class people still bought newspapers, and stores could easily put advertising in them.
Well, most newspapers. Rupert Murdoch once asked his good friend Alfred Bloomingdale why the retail magnate did not advertise in the New York Post. Bloomingdale retorted "Your readers are my shoplifters!"
7. The suburbs of the time were generally boring places with little to do, so shopping at the mall could be a form of entertainment.
8. Red-lining ensured that the malls would have the only shoppers that they could market to effectively -- white customers -- within easy reach of the malls. Malls needed not cater to blacks or Hispanics that they could not market to effectively even if those minorities were middle-class.
That has changed dramatically. People with middle-class jobs are paying higher real rents than they did in the 1960s and they have less space in which to stash stuff. Those higher real rents cut into disposable income. Suburban real estate has become more expensive or it has deteriorated as housing from the post-WWII era approaches the end of its useful life -- and local taxes rise because local infrastructure needs costly renovation or replacement. Recent college graduates almost invariably have a huge student loan to pay -- people heavily in debt have much less disposable income than people not in debt. People without college degrees may have no student loan debt -- but they are generally broke if they are young due to jobs that pay pittances. People get their advertising from disparate sources not likely to shape mass consumption characteristic of the shoppers at malls in the 1960s and may get entertainment that does not come with advertising (premium cable, recorded video, and the Internet). So maybe "We can watch Spiderman 12 tonight on TV (through a DVD or Blu-Ray player)". There is much more entertainment in the suburbs than there was fifty years ago, so 'going shopping' may have become boring drudgery. Finally, many shopping malls stayed put as neighborhoods 'changed' and low-income people supplanted the old suburbanites as developers knocked down housing built for WWII vets with apartments that can shoehorn more people into lesser space The tenants of such places were not flush with cash and still aren't. Costs of taxes, utilities, and maintenance outstrip revenues -- and for any business that is the beginning of its death.
1. The target customers (the white middle class -- and I remember when one of the secret rules of retailing was to remember that blacks and whatever Hispanic population was large in the area were shoplifters and not shoppers) were flush with cash if they had white-collar jobs or skilled trades. Second incomes (by middle-class wives) became common and spurred luxury spending
2. Plenty of green-field real estate was available for shopping malls and the parking lots that they needed. Taxes were low by current standards.
3. College education was at its cheapest, so college graduates, even if they had low-paying jobs at least did not generally have college debt
4. Mortgage costs were at historic real lows because of inflation that devalued loan balances and because of low interest rates. Houses were spacious (much more spacious than apartments of Millennial adults with job titles similar to those of Silent adults of like age lived in) and thus enticed people to buy more stuff because they could store more stuff.
5. People taking commutes into the core cities for work didn't want to take another trip downtown to shop.
6. Media were sparser and more concentrated. There were three network channels in less-favored cities (let us say Fort Wayne), three network channels and an independent station in Indianapolis, and three network and two independent channels in Chicago (NET and in turn PBS did not supply advertising). Except for regional department stores as anchors the malls had the same stores whether they were in Arlington, Texas or Arlington, Virginia and thus could exploit national advertising. Middle0class people still bought newspapers, and stores could easily put advertising in them.
Well, most newspapers. Rupert Murdoch once asked his good friend Alfred Bloomingdale why the retail magnate did not advertise in the New York Post. Bloomingdale retorted "Your readers are my shoplifters!"
7. The suburbs of the time were generally boring places with little to do, so shopping at the mall could be a form of entertainment.
8. Red-lining ensured that the malls would have the only shoppers that they could market to effectively -- white customers -- within easy reach of the malls. Malls needed not cater to blacks or Hispanics that they could not market to effectively even if those minorities were middle-class.
That has changed dramatically. People with middle-class jobs are paying higher real rents than they did in the 1960s and they have less space in which to stash stuff. Those higher real rents cut into disposable income. Suburban real estate has become more expensive or it has deteriorated as housing from the post-WWII era approaches the end of its useful life -- and local taxes rise because local infrastructure needs costly renovation or replacement. Recent college graduates almost invariably have a huge student loan to pay -- people heavily in debt have much less disposable income than people not in debt. People without college degrees may have no student loan debt -- but they are generally broke if they are young due to jobs that pay pittances. People get their advertising from disparate sources not likely to shape mass consumption characteristic of the shoppers at malls in the 1960s and may get entertainment that does not come with advertising (premium cable, recorded video, and the Internet). So maybe "We can watch Spiderman 12 tonight on TV (through a DVD or Blu-Ray player)". There is much more entertainment in the suburbs than there was fifty years ago, so 'going shopping' may have become boring drudgery. Finally, many shopping malls stayed put as neighborhoods 'changed' and low-income people supplanted the old suburbanites as developers knocked down housing built for WWII vets with apartments that can shoehorn more people into lesser space The tenants of such places were not flush with cash and still aren't. Costs of taxes, utilities, and maintenance outstrip revenues -- and for any business that is the beginning of its death.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.