[HN Gopher] Not your mother's mall (2003)
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Not your mother's mall (2003)
Author : pastureofplenty
Score : 13 points
Date : 2024-04-17 05:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| dotBen wrote:
| Note this is from 2003...
|
| Internet is no longer just 5% of retail.
|
| That $100m rebuild of the Tanforan mall is already being exited
| and will be converted to a biotech and life sciences hub.
|
| The rest of the general impact to retail, I'm sure everyone is
| aware of.
| nickt wrote:
| I'm amazed that in 2022 internet retail was only about 15% of
| the total [1]. The Dept. of Commerce stats show that Q4 2023
| was at 15.6% [2].
|
| I expected it to be higher.
|
| [1] https://www.zippia.com/advice/what-percentage-of-retail-
| sale...
|
| [2] https://www.census.gov/retail/ecommerce.html
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Groceries. Most people still like visiting those in-person.
| Especially for things like picking out
| fruits/veggies/meats/etc.
| bena wrote:
| I purchase a fair amount of stuff online, but there's still
| a lot of things I buy in person.
| ghaff wrote:
| Groceries, a lot of clothes, bulky/heavy items, impulse
| purchases when you're shopping anyway... I probably shop
| online more than the average person but I still do a lot
| in-person.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Why? In the age of ubiquitous scams online, including at
| "trusted" places like Amazon or Walmart or Target that all
| function as weird drop-shipping storefronts, the ability to
| walk in, see the item, see that it's not fraudulent, that
| it's real, and can be returned if it is incorrect or broken
| with minimal hassle, is real value.
|
| I peaked in Internet shopping around 2010 when Prime was, you
| know, good. Since then I have vastly preferred going in
| person.
|
| Clothes? You can try them on. Electronics? Won't set your
| house on fire. Food? It's fresh and I get it today.
|
| If you told me in the aughts that Newegg would be a ghost
| town and that I'd prefer going to Best Buy, I'd've called you
| a troglodyte moron, but today that's exactly how it is.
|
| These are all anecdotes but I can't possibly be alone in
| these feelings. 15% sounds about right to me. I order online
| when I must.. otherwise, I drive to the store.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I wish my Best Buys were like that. Anytime I go in most of
| the small and messy inventory is mis-marked, I can't find a
| free representative, and the prices are often 20% if not
| 50% more for functionally equivalent products.
|
| It's a shame, in high school me and my nerdy friends would
| stop in often enough to check out new gear. Now we just
| swap Amazon links.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Yeah, it's disappointing compared to how it was in the
| mid 90s/early 2000s. It was one of my favorite stores as
| a teen. Luckily for me I live close enough to a
| MicroCenter which still has the old school electronics
| store magic.
| m463 wrote:
| Yeah, when I read about adding glow-in-the-dark miniature golf,
| I thought "but... hasn't that golf place has been there
| forever?"
|
| I kind of wonder if it's still there.
| ghaff wrote:
| At some point, even pre-pandemic, I came to the conclusion that
| getting something in 2 days via delivery was probably faster
| than I would get around to getting to the store. For some
| things, I still prefer to go in person especially if it's just
| down the street or I'm in the area. But increasingly little.
| (Except grocery.)
| throwway120385 wrote:
| This is a really good example of how focusing on a single metric
| can eventually lead to the death of your company. The reason
| people started using online shopping was to save time, which is
| completely at odds with the metric malls were using for success,
| which was the amount of time you spend in the mall and the number
| of visits you made. Had they recognized that their key metric was
| at odds with the desires of their patrons, they might have made
| some significant changes at a time when they still had a strong
| beachhead in the space.
| amelius wrote:
| > The reason people started using online shopping was to save
| time
|
| I doubt that. Many people can save a __lot__ of time by
| stopping their online shopping habit.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| I think that convenience is a big factor in online shopping,
| but I agree with the parent that it's a bit of an overstep to
| say that saving time is "the" reason to shop online.
|
| Personally, I tried to put it off because I like the idea of
| shopping local and supporting local businesses. Plus,
| shopping in person was familiar and a skill I already had.
|
| In retrospect I think the thing that really pried me away
| from in-person shopping and into online shopping was that
| online shopping (Amazon, in particular) serves as a
| "universal backstop" for whatever I'm looking for. Like, if I
| try and find an item in a store and I can't find it (or it's
| too expensive) then I can always find it online. So I throw a
| request at my local store(s), they miss, and an online
| retailer catches the request behind them. Once my now-ex got
| us a Prime membership this got even easier, and now I start
| most of my orders online (except food, obviously).
|
| I have no idea how typical my story is but the point is that
| there's more than one road that leads to online shopping, for
| sure :)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > at odds with the desires of their patrons
|
| I doubt that at any point if they asked their patrons and got
| honest answers, saving time would stand out as a large desire.
|
| What is another problem with metrics, they measure an specific
| thing that is often very different from the one you think you
| are measuring.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Yep. If you ask people at a mall, they're already _there_ ,
| and probably aren't as interested in saving time. The people
| interested in saving time also wouldn't stop to answer your
| "mall survey person" trying to stop them in the mall, even if
| they were there. ;)
| theamk wrote:
| There is more than one reason people go to malls, and "save
| time" is probably not even on the list.
| Animats wrote:
| "Natural bamboo landscaping, living room comfort seating and a
| soothing paint palette mirroring the calendar seasons"...
|
| I wonder how long that lasted.
|
| Starbucks doesn't even have chairs in many of their locations
| now. The prices didn't drop when they took them out, either.
|
| Amazingly, Hillsdale Mall is still operating.[1] It probably
| survived because it was owned by a local family from 1954 to
| 2021.
|
| [1] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3s292u
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