All those genres of retail have been completely and thoroughly replaced by far better alternatives.

As I mentioned above, The Simon Group’s “The Domain” in Austin is a good evolution of a mall like space that people want.

It was developed and operated by the largest mall operator in the nation, the Simon Property Group.

They evolved away from the all enclosed malls of the 60s-80s (just as those had evolved away from the open-air malls of the generation before) to more convenient, larger strip malls. In my area, most suburbs have a more modern large strip center with the stores like Target, Kohl’s, Old Navy, TJ Maxx, Petco, Sprouts and Bed Bath and Beyond and several casual restaurants. Those types of malls seem to being doing fine, for now. Two new ones, with similar stores, are just being finished close to my house, while we already had one with the above stores that’s about 15 years old and starting to look dated.

I think a big part of it is that folks tastes in malls changed.

I think Amazon is thinking of this kind of pickup service, so Walmart has been trying to get ahead of that game. Good for them.

The Walmart service works great. The next step is to have those groceries delivered to my doorstep. I suspect that the problem in doing it is regulatory, not technical.

Those low margins make it hard to compete with people’s willingness to do their own delivery. OTOH, if Amazon can take all the higher margin items, grocers will find themselves squeezes even tighter.

https://www.law360.com/articles/561185/amazon-seeks-to-end-suit-over-hidden-amazon-prime-costs

There was a period when Amazon was losing a lot of money, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time now. And Amazon certainly doesn’t know it can’t make money selling stuff — they’re pushing hard to add same-day and one-day delivery in more and more places.

No. In several US cities Amazon Prime Now delivers in 2 hours or less. I believe I read that their current best record for click-to-door is under 15 minutes. With the drones operating in more rural areas already in England, it’ll be pretty hard to beat them in your car making a round-trip to a store. Drones can move pretty fast. In cities they’ll do their Uber/package thing (forget the name) and it’ll be fast too.

Don’t forget network effects. The more customers Amazon has, the more warehouses they build in more places, and the closer to you any given item in their inventory gets. Plus AI/ML software helps them predict where those items are going to go.

The odds are you’ll have better selection at better prices and faster delivery from Amazon than any store you could reach in your car in the same amount of time. The only reason to go on-site to shop will be due to some other amenity, some kind of social pattern, or face-to-face service. Perhaps one-of-a-kind items from local craftsmen will be worth a trip, just to be different.

Why?

Because while the prices may start out quite good, they often evolved to be quite bad.
AND almost all of those things can be had at grocery stores very near my route from home to workshop or elsewhere. That is, stopping off at the grocery store on a trip I had to take anyway is nearly free. (And never leaving my house turns out to be bad for my mental health.)

On this topic – in my area, the traditional grocery stores have upped their games so much there’s no point going to whole foods or the like, the mainline grocery stores have adequate pharmacies, adequate premade food, etc. Amazon fresh produce and the like I tried were awful – so I have only ever used it for consistent packaged goods.

For every other *consumer* item – the web, often amazon. Even to the point of most clothing.

I wonder if there will come a time when anything you need *today* because you didn’t think to order it at least one day in advance will require visiting a “crises store” with poor selection and very high prices?