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It’s been a wild ride for the beauty category. Following a strong couple of years, the segment's growth has stalled in recent months, with clothing – led by the strong performance of off-price chains – taking over the top discretionary growth spot. The slowdown in the beauty space has led some to wonder whether the category's boost from the "lipstick-effect" has reached a ceiling.
However, there are a few niches within the beauty category that may portend success, including Korean Beauty (aka K-Beauty), as well as brands focusing on personalization and sustainability.
First up, K-Beauty. Every summer, there is a song or movie that takes over the charts and goes viral. This summer, it is the unstoppable juggernaut from Netflix K-Pop Demon Hunters. Viewers and listeners around the world just can’t shake the catchy tunes like Soda Pop and the powerful anthem Golden. This animated feature is breaking records left and right: Netflix’s most-watched original animated film, first Netflix film ever to reach a new viewing peak in its fifth week of release showing the power of word of mouth, and the film’s lead single, “Golden,” sung by the girl group Huntrix (EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami), hit No. 1 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs on July 8th.
K-Pop has already been quite popular in the US for quite some time, with headliners like Blackpink and BTS drawing record crowds. Korean shows like Squid Game have also riveted viewers. And one of the most recent beauty trends on TikTok involves Korean beauty strategies to attain “glass skin.” Key ingredients in K-Beauty such as snail mucin in the holy grail product CosRX, green tea antioxidants, or ginseng have already made their way into many Americans’ daily skincare routines.
With all this recent interest in Korean culture, Ulta is one retailer perfectly poised to introduce its curated selection of K-beauty brands.
In mid-July, the company launched K-Beauty World, which introduces American consumers to a host of K-beauty brands, such as Chasin’ Rabbits, I’m From, Mixsoon, NEOGEN, Rom&nd, Some By Mi, Sungboon Editor and Unleashia. K-Beauty World had an immersive multi-city tour earlier this year including Westfield Century City in Los Angeles, SXSW in Austin, Revolve at Coachella, and Lollapalooza in Chicago. And since the launch, Ulta has drawn longer visits and a higher share of singles to its stores.
Personalization is another big buzzword in the beauty world. With over a dozen stores across the US and Canada, Lip Lab is one beauty chain that allows patrons to customize their products (lipstick, gloss, balm or cheek stick), pick their perfect shade, select a case, add a scent, and engrave the name of their creation. In the case of Lip Lab at Scottsdale Quarter, Spatial.ai’s PersonaLive's dataset shows that this tenant helps to attract Wealthy Suburban Families and Young Urban Singles to a shopping center that otherwise skews a bit older – usually, Sunset Boomers make up over one-fifth of Scottsdale Quarter's shoppers.
In sum, beauty is ever-changing and consumers can be quite fickle. What was once a must-have brand with tweens or a sold-out item on BeautyTok can quickly become yesterday’s news. However, for the year ahead, we do think that K-beauty and personalization can help brands burst through the zeitgeist to capture consumers’ attention.
For more data-driven consumer insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
Although headlines often highlight a decline in alcohol consumption – particularly among younger generations – the data paints a more nuanced picture, with liquor store traffic remaining well above pre-pandemic baselines. So how has BevAlc consumer behavior changed since 2019? And where is traffic still growing year-over-year? We dove into the data to find out.
As shown in the left-hand chart below, visits to BevAlc chains skyrocketed since 2018, with traffic hovering 40 to 60% above Q1 ’19 – a significantly larger increase than that seen in the wider grocery sector as a whole. But the year-over-year growth has largely flattened, as seen in the right-hand chart, with overall grocery traffic now seeing higher year-over-year growth in H1 2025.
Taken together, these two charts suggest that BevAlc remains a core part of consumers' shopping mix – even if the explosive, pandemic-era acceleration has stabilized into a new normal.
And although BevAlc visits nationwide have flattened, visitation data highlights regional pockets of BevAlc growth. Florida metros such as Port St. Lucie, Sebastian–Vero Beach, and Homosassa Springs posted some of the strongest year-over-year gains, supported by population inflows and steady tourism activity. Similar momentum appeared in select Southern markets, including parts of Texas and the Carolinas.
Meanwhile, many Northeastern and West Coast markets experienced steady pullbacks. Pennsylvania metros like Sunbury, Johnstown, and Erie registered consistent declines, while California hubs including Sacramento, Modesto, and Stockton saw negative traffic trends as well.
This divergence suggests that national averages mask meaningful local variation: while consumers overall are steady in their liquor purchases, certain regions are emerging as growth hubs while others cool.
The opportunity in BevAlc retail now isn't in chasing broad national growth, but in aligning with regional demand dynamics. In Florida and Texas, where visitation is climbing, retailers can lean into assortment expansion, premium products, and in-store promotions to capture incremental spend. In slower markets like California and the Northeast, focusing on loyalty programs, distribution through grocery stores, and smaller format stores that emphasize convenience and value might yield better results.
For more data-driven consumer insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
It’s that time again. The time where I share my thoughts on everything I think I think about retail...at this very moment.
Over the first nine months of 2025, we have witnessed some pretty darn amazing things across the retail industry. We've witnessed traditional competitive boundaries blur as some large scale grocery players (at least, one that is one and one that wants to be one) venture into same-day delivery logistics, we’ve seen warehouse clubs reimagine convenience, and we have also had more than one retailer experiment with what the right size of its store footprint should be.
What emerges from this chaos is a revalidation of what omnichannel retailing really is. It is about the reimagining of how consumers shop, where they shop, and why they choose to shop one retailer over another.
Therefore, the following observations represent not just trends to watch, but strategic inflection points that could determine which retailers will have the greatest probability to thrive going forward in this beautiful and increasingly complex omnichannel world.
In Q2 2025, Walmart delivered comparable sales growth of +4.5% (excluding fuel), driven largely by profitable e-commerce, and maintained stable store traffic. Monthly same-store visits, according to Placer.ai, were also remarkably steady between +0.7% and -1.8%, from May through August, amid industry-wide macroeconomic pressures.
Meanwhile, the other U.S. retailing behemoth, Amazon, began pushing (or is it forcing?) its way into grocery in August by way of same-day delivery. Walmart, on the flip side, and not to be outdone, also began putting significant resources behind its Walmart Fulfillment Services offering.
All told, it is a game of anything you can do, I can do better. It is one-upmanship at its finest.
The only question is – who stands the better chance of winning? Or at least drawing blood from the other?
From my vantage point, Walmart has a much better chance of holding onto its grocery reign because it already is a grocer, and quite a large one at that – drawing nearly half as many visits as the entire brick-and-mortar grocery category. Walmart’s 4,600+ store advantage is sizable. Amazon may take from others but the moat around Walmart is pretty large.
On the other hand, will Amazon keep a similar hold on its vendor logistics business?
If I were a betting man, Walmart has a better chance of making inroads on Amazon’s logistics revenue than Amazon has on hurting Walmart in grocery.
Said another way, I guess the box may soon be on the other porch, Amazon.
The size of one’s store base is dependent upon so many factors.
Location, the overall experience design, the ROI of “the box,” and more can all impact the size and shape of a retailer’s store base, and, more often than not, all of them actually work in concert together. Which is why anyone pontificating on the trend in the “size” of stores likely hasn’t put much thought into his or her argument.
Despite the recent run-up of retailers trying to get smaller (Macy’s, in particular, comes to mind), there is no tried-and-true rule that smaller stores will work or vice versa.
In some cases, like in dense or urban markets, smaller stores might work, while in others, if the approach is one of creating destination-type stores, like Hy-Vee or Buc-ees, larger stores might work, too.
My favorite example of someone “getting smaller” is Sprouts. As Sprouts CEO Jack Sinclair told me at Groceryshop, Sprouts realized its format had gotten too large, went back to its roots of differentiated products and great looking fresh produce in a smaller box, and has not looked back since.
At the end of the day – smaller, bigger, uncut – none of it matters as much as what your brand is trying to accomplish for your customers and what, in turn, resonates with them the most.
I think we can all agree that, generally speaking, Walmart and the warehouse clubs are noted for having great prices. On the flip side, what they haven’t been known as much for in the past is a quick and convenient shopping experience.
But that is about to change for two reasons.
The first is economics. There is always a trade-off between convenience and price. As budgets continue to get constrained, people will begin to trade off waiting in lines or navigating the dreaded Costco parking lot to save money.
The second is the evolution of these retailers as omnichannel retailers. For example, Walmart’s Chief E-Commerce Officer David Guggina told me recently that one-third of Walmart’s scheduled deliveries are delivered to Walmart customers in under three hours (see video of interview). This behavior itself gives rise to the theory that people are starting to leverage Walmart for quick trips.
Delivery is only one leg of the omnichannel stool, however.
The other two legs are buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) and the actual speed of the in-store experience itself. Much has been documented already about the rise of BOPIS following the pandemic, so I won’t belabor the point here because it, too, is likely driving the data below.
The other aspect is that places like Sam’s Club have done a masterful job of making their stores more convenient and time-efficient. Sam’s Club is leading the way on cashierless checkout in the club channel. Sam’s Club Scan & Go shoppers, which account for an amazing one-third of the Sam’s Club customer base, can simply walk through an AI-powered exit arch and then have a digital receipt sent to them upon exit.
Allow me to take a moment to put this last statement into perspective with a concrete example.
Pretend my wife calls me on my way home from work and asks me to pick up some milk. I have a choice: Do I go to the local grocer or do I go to Sam’s? If I decide to go local, I likely will end up paying more ,and I could also possibly have to wait in line to check out at either a manned till or a self-checkout machine. On the other hand, if I go to Sam’s Club, I can just walk in, scan the milk I want, pay at a paystation and then walk through the arch.
Which experience would you choose?
Enough said.
The number one answer any retailer needs to answer in today’s omnichannel world is, “Why come to my store in the first place.”
And that answer begins and ends with good merchandising.
Take a look at some of the more creative merchandising efforts this year as depicted in the graph below:
What they all have in common is a “hook.” Someone got creative and went outside of the box to compel customers into their stores for new and exciting reasons. It is the definition of good merchandising.
Therefore, retailers, convenience store operators, and QSRs can never rest on their laurels. They constantly need to push the envelope to one-up the year before and the competition.
The best merchants get supercharged by the creative demands of this challenge. The worst merchants get their answers from interpolating spreadsheets and making decisions solely off of last year’s data.
Speaking of merchandising, the convergence of technology and the increasing tendency of consumers to use supermarkets as their mid-day lunch or snack source versus QSRs could inspire a unique opportunity for those grocers adventurous enough to seize it.
I have long been a proponent of electronic shelf labels. The use cases in support of them are almost endless at this point. One of my favorite use cases is the ability to run intra-day promotions, an idea that is virtually impossible with paper price tags, and one that also gets supercharged when the component of in-store digital media screens gets added to the equation as well.
Imagine a grocer who uses electronic shelf labels and then starts running unique daily promotions at lunch time. These promotions could be done on ANYTHING:
You get the idea. It is the Venn diagram of retail media and in-store execution at its finest.
The convergence of these above trends signals a tried-and-true retail axiom, i.e. that success is determined not by what you sell per se, but by how you can integrate convenience, value, and your brand (a better word choice than experience) across every touchpoint.
And this axiom will manifest itself in a number of self-affirming, yet sizable ways.
First, as the Walmart/Amazon tête-à-tête illustrates, a single channel advantage will become almost impossible to defend. Retailers need to decide in which channels they want to speak to their customers or risk being outflanked by competitors who will. This creates both vulnerability for established players and opportunities for agile newcomers who can build omnichannel capabilities from the ground up.
Second, technology will play an even bigger role as the industry equalizer. The Sam's Club scan-and-go example is the perfect encapsulation of this idea. It shows how technology can completely flip traditional competitive dynamics. Warehouse clubs, once seen as inconvenient despite their pricing advantages, are at the tipping point of becoming more convenient (and value-laden) than traditional grocers. Retailers who boldly invest in finding new ways to use technology to flip their positioning on the convenience-value-brand spectrum stand to capture disproportionate market share, regardless of their historical positioning.
Third, merchandising is and will forever be the epicenter of retailing. As physical store differentiation becomes harder to achieve, creative merchandising becomes the primary weapon for driving foot traffic and brand loyalty. Retailers who cannot consistently surprise and delight customers with consistent in-stocks, innovative in-store displays, exciting product collaborations, and limited-time offerings will find themselves relegated to utility shopping only, which is about as big as a “Danger Will Robinson” position as there is.
As I look back on 2025, Walmart, hands down, is “winning.” Sure, it has scale. It is the biggest retailer going. But scale isn’t why Walmart is on the hot streak that it is. The real secret to Walmart’s success has been its incredible speed of adaptation, rather than the scale of its operation. Its scale only enhances the impact of successful adaptation.
That is the real punchline to the joke.
What got you here won’t get you there. The task at hand is to transform fast enough to remain relevant in a world where the rules of engagement are being rewritten all the time, by competitors both large and small.
For more data-driven insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
2025 has been a year of comebacks for legacy retailers. Brands like Barnes & Noble, Gap, and Abercrombie & Fitch are seeing renewed momentum. And amid this wave of revivals, Beyond, Inc. and The Brand House Collective (formerly Kirkland’s Inc.) are betting on one of retail’s most iconic banners: Bed Bath & Beyond (BBB).
After acquiring Kirkland’s intellectual property, Beyond Inc. plans to rebrand 250–275 Kirkland’s stores as Bed Bath & Beyond Home and close the rest. The strategy aims to merge Kirkland’s real estate footprint with the trust and recognition of BBB – once the undisputed leader in home furnishings retail. Can the pull of nostalgia and the equity of a trusted brand rewrite the trajectory of a struggling home furnishings chain?
Kirkland’s, known for accessible home décor and furnishings, has long been a staple of the home furnishings sector. Yet like many of its peers, it has grappled with headwinds from softening discretionary spending. Since 2019, overall visits to the chain have steadily declined as the company downsized its store fleet – and most months of 2025 have continued to register year-over-year (YoY) foot traffic declines. Online performance has also lagged, with digital comparable sales dropping last quarter by double digits.
Still, the data also reveals signs of underlying brick-and-mortar strength. Over the past several quarters, Kirkland’s in-store comparable sales have remained relatively stable, with some quarters seeing slight increases and others modest declines. And as illustrated by the chart below, the chain’s reduced fleet has posted modest same-store visit gains through much of this year, suggesting that the company’s remaining stores may be well-positioned for a turnaround.
Against this backdrop, plans to merge Kirkland’s real estate footprint with the trust and recognition of BBB offer significant promise. The pie chart below offers a reminder of just how influential Bed Bath & Beyond once was: In 2019, BBB accounted for nearly one-fourth of all visits to the home furnishings sector nationwide, far outpacing rivals. While the company’s bankruptcy in 2023 suggested that brand power alone couldn’t offset operational missteps, the name still carries significant weight with consumers. For Kirkland’s, this partnership could provide the spark it needs for renewed growth.
The combination of Kirkland’s streamlined fleet and BBB’s brand equity creates a compelling recipe for revival. With the right execution – balancing nostalgia with modern retail practices – this collaboration could transform a fading chain into a leader once more.
To see up-to-date retail traffic trends, visit our free tools.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
Homewares and home decor chains have seen their share of ups and downs over the past few years, from pandemic highs to a discretionary retail slowdown – but some chains, especially high-end ones, are thriving. We took a look at visit data to four retailers – Restoration Hardware (RH), Le Creuset, and Sur La Table – to see what the visit data and demographics reveal about the segment.
Homewares are having a cultural moment – a shift that first gained momentum during the pandemic, when people stuck at home began investing deeply in their living spaces. Since then, social media’s influence has helped lifestyle-forward brands like RH and Le Creuset gain cultural cachet – and visits to these retailers have significantly outpaced the broader home improvement sector, as shown in the chart below.
This resilience – especially amid a broader retail slowdown – underscores how home decor and kitchenware are evolving into status and lifestyle symbols, with culinary aesthetics even finding expression in decor trends.
Although RH, Sur La Table, and Le Creuset all compete in the premium home goods segment, their different brand identities attract distinct audiences and lead to very different in-store behaviors.
RH and Sur La Table attract some of the most affluent, luxury-oriented shoppers in retail and consistently post long dwell times. Both brands use their store fleets not just as showrooms, but as platforms for high-margin services and experiences that extend engagement and drive revenue between product cycles.
Many flagship RH stores include a fine-dining restaurant, and the chain ties complimentary design consultations to a paid annual membership – both of which may resonate with younger “Educated Urbanites” who value elevated dining experiences and expert guidance as they furnish their first homes. Sur La Table, by contrast, generates fee-based revenue from cooking classes and curated international culinary trips, offerings that appeal most to “Booming with Confidence” households – prosperous, established couples eager to invest in premium food and travel experiences. By tailoring experiential services to the distinct aspirations of their core audiences, RH and Sur La Table demonstrate how luxury retailers can extend brand relevance, and sustain growth beyond traditional product sales.
Le Creuset, by contrast, follows a more sales-driven model. With a lower share of high-income households, the brand reaches aspirational, luxury-adjacent shoppers who may have less discretionary income for premium experiences. Store activations such as Factory-to-Table events are designed primarily to drive transactions rather than prolong visits. Le Creuset also over-indexes among “Singles and Starters” – younger, upwardly mobile shoppers who frequently discover the brand on social media. This group tends to conduct heavy online research before visiting, leading to shorter, purpose-driven trips where shoppers arrive ready to buy.
Together, the patterns suggest two distinct playbooks: RH and Sur La Table use experience to lengthen visits and monetize engagement between product cycles, while Le Creuset relies on highly considered, research-led purchases that translate into shorter, purpose-driven store trips.
The success of RH, Sur La Table, and Le Creuset highlights that there is no single formula for winning in luxury retail. Some brands lean on immersive experiences that extend and monetize engagement. Others focus on sales-driven activations that convert researched shoppers. What unites them is a sharp alignment between strategy and the values and behaviors of their core audiences – a positioning that enables them to thrive even amid broader retail headwinds.
For more retail data, visit our free tools.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
The recent revival of McDonald’s Extra Value Meal has fueled speculation that the quick-service restaurant (QSR) space might be gearing up for another round of value wars. Yet the data suggests that basic value offerings may no longer be enough to reliably drive traffic. To overcome consumer fatigue and heightened price sensitivity, brands must deliver promotions that truly stand out – whether through unusually deep discounts, memorable giveaways, or culturally resonant collaborations.
McDonald’s recent foot traffic trends illustrate this dynamic. Despite the chain’s Extra Value Meals relaunch, visits to McDonald’s dropped 4.4% year over year (YoY) during the week of September 8th and fell a further 5.2% and 3.7% over the next two weeks. These results pale in comparison to the brand’s April 2025 Minecraft Movie Meal collaboration, which generated consistent traffic boosts throughout its run.
The muted YoY impact of the new value meal doesn’t necessarily signal failure – after all, McDonald’s is lapping last year’s $5 Summer of Value campaign, which extended through 2024. But it highlights the limits of standard deals in a marketplace where consumers expect baseline value from QSR leaders. In an environment crowded with offerings – from Taco Bell’s Luxe Boxes, to Wendy’s Biggie Bags and Burger King’s 2 for $5 promotions – incremental savings feel less like innovation and more like table stakes.
Still, truly eye-catching promotions continue to break through – and McDonald’s 50-cent Double Cheeseburger deal on National Cheeseburger Day (September 18th, 2025) is a case in point. On the day of the promotion, visits jumped 6.4% compared to the chain’s recent Thursday average – showing that consumers remain highly responsive to promotions that feel unique and unmissable.
Pizza Hut’s summer promotions tell a similar story. The chain’s $2-Buck Tuesday deal, which offered a one-topping Personal Pan Pizza for just $2, drove a remarkable 63.2% YoY surge in Tuesday visits during its run (July 8th through August 26th, 2025). And although foot traffic continued to decline on other days of the week, the promotion’s Tuesday lift was enough to push overall weekly visits into positive territory for much of its duration.
Yet when Pizza Hut followed up with a more conventional $5 Crafted Flatzz menu in late August – available all week long until 5:00 PM – the response was far less dramatic. Though traffic held steady YoY during the first weeks of the launch, and the brand’s YoY visit gap has remained somewhat narrower since, consumers clearly differentiated between a “can’t-miss” deal and a “reasonable” discount.
Dairy Queen provides further illustration of both the power and the limits of value promotions in 2025. The chain’s annual Free Cone Day, held at the start of spring, generated an astonishing 326.7% spike in visits on Thursday, March 20th compared to the prior same-day average. The deal even outperformed 2024’s Free Cone Day, boosting weekly traffic 23.8% YoY despite lapping last year’s March 19th event. And an 85-cent Blizzard deal the following week extended the surge, lifting visits 31.2% YoY.
But when Dairy Queen relaunched the same 85-cent Blizzard offer in September (September 8th to 21st, 2025), results were far more muted. Seasonality likely played a role – ice cream naturally peaks in spring and summer, and wanes in colder weather. But repetition also dulls impact, and without the momentum of a free giveaway just days before, the fall promotion may have felt more routine.
The mixed results of McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Dairy Queen’s 2025 promotions show that standard value menus are no longer enough to stand out in today’s price-sensitive QSR market. The most effective deals offer consumers something they can’t get anywhere else – whether freebies, unusually deep discounts, or resonant pop-culture tie-ins. For QSRs, the challenge is to capture attention and disrupt routines without eroding margins through unsustainable discounting.
For more QSR insights, explore Placer.ai’s free industry trends tool.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
Malls have long acted as a gleaming symbol of American retail. Following the opening of the first indoor mall in 1956, and as the American middle class increasingly moved from the city to the suburbs, malls continued to open at a rapid rate. By 1960, some 4,500 shopping centers had opened nationwide, filling the growing demand for “third places” – spaces that allowed the newly suburban populations to gather, socialize, and create community. And while that role evolved over the years, it’s safe to say that malls have played a major part in shaping the American shopping culture.
But malls’ rapid expansion led to an oversaturated market – some estimates suggest that there are approximately 24 square feet of retail space per U.S. citizen, as compared to 4.6 for the U.K. and 2.8 for China. Many began to predict the demise and downfall of malls, and that narrative intensified as online shopping grew in popularity. The rise of big-box stores, a focus on “services, not things,” and COVID-19 only accelerated these trends.
A lot of the doom and gloom predictions tend to de-emphasize the mall's role as a modern incarnation of a bustling downtown shopping area.
But a lot of these doom and gloom predictions focus on malls only as a place to shop, and tend to de-emphasize their other role as the third place – a modern incarnation of a bustling downtown shopping area, replete with shops, services, and places to meet. And after two years of isolation and a new, pandemic-induced wave of suburban relocation, malls’ potential to bring people together is more prized than ever.
So although malls were hit hard during COVID-19, many of them are finding ways to reinvent themselves and stay relevant. Today, more than halfway through 2022, the challenges that malls face continue to evolve and change – but malls are evolving too. This white paper covers a few specific ways that some malls have found to thrive in the new normal. Some shopping centers are turning to entertainment to draw crowds into their doors. Others are focusing on offering a full visitor experience that extends beyond simply grabbing a new shirt or a burger at the food court. Still, more are embracing omnichannel options, offering an integrated on and offline experience to their shoppers. In the face of significant retail challenges, top-tier malls are turning to innovative solutions to stay ahead of the game.
The pandemic posed significant challenges to malls. Although foot traffic to the category rose back up in the summer of 2021, the Delta and subsequent Omicron waves brought visits down once more. And as visit gaps post-Omicron began to narrow, inflation and gas prices put the brakes on any return to normalcy. April and May 2022 saw visits beginning to trend up, though the unrelenting rise of inflation, the highest it’s been in the past 40 years, has slowed that recovery slightly.
Foot traffic data shows that malls are continuing to attract visitors, despite the challenges that seem to crop up weekly.
Still, foot traffic data shows that malls are continuing to attract visitors, despite the challenges that seem to crop up weekly. And while they may no longer play the central role they once did in Americans’ shopping routines, malls still serve as indoor community hubs where friends and family can come together for diverse food, shops, and entertainment options. This could explain why top-tier malls keep on coming back despite the seemingly constant obstacles.
Comparing monthly visits from January 2022 through July 2022 to the same period in 2019 highlights the significant difficulties facing the sector. Indoor malls, open-air lifestyle centers, and outlet malls alike saw marked lags in foot traffic as compared to three years ago.
Monthly year-over-three-year (Yo3Y) foot traffic comparisons also highlight mall resilience.
The monthly year-over-three-year (Yo3Y) foot traffic comparisons also highlight mall resilience. Following an Omicron-plagued January, the visit gaps narrowed in February 2022 to less than 5% for all the segments. And although the increase in gas prices and inflation brought visits down in March, malls quickly bounced back in April 2022, with indoor malls seeing only 1.8% fewer visits than in 2019 and open-air shopping centers down only 4.8% Yo3Y. Foot traffic fell again in May and June as consumers tightened their budgets in the face of rising prices, but consumers appear to have quickly made peace with the new economic reality. By July 2022, visits to indoor malls and open-air lifestyle centers were only 3.5% and 2.7% lower than they had been in July 2019.
COVID didn’t just impact visit numbers – since 2020, mall visits have also gotten shorter, likely a result of pandemic restrictions and a general desire not to congregate any longer than necessary. And although 2021 and 2022 saw a slight uptick in time spent at malls and shopping centers – from 60 minutes in 2020 to 62 minutes in 2021 and 2022 – the median dwell time is still significantly lower than the 70 minutes median dwell time of pre-COVID 2018 and 2019.
Shorter visits are not necessarily a bad thing – intent-driven shoppers may simply be doing more research ahead of time and less in-mall browsing.
Shorter visits are not necessarily a bad thing in and of themselves – consumers today are highly informed, so many intent-driven shoppers may simply be doing more research ahead of time and less in-mall browsing. But shorter (and fewer) visits do mean that malls must focus on giving shoppers a reason to visit. We explore some successful strategies below.
Malls have long integrated entertainment into their overall experience in the form of arcades, movie theaters, and even coin-operated animal rides. Some malls, however, are taking their entertainment offerings to the next level.
In August 2021, CBL Properties, a Tennessee-based property developer, announced the opening of the Hollywood Casino by Penn National Gaming in the York Galleria Mall in York, Pennsylvania. The 80,000 square foot casino, which boasts 500 slots and 24 live-action table games, opened in the mall’s lower level. The space was occupied by a now-closed Sears department store, and the entertainment venue now functions as a new anchor to draw customers in.
The casino’s opening has had a dramatic impact on the mall’s foot traffic. In a year-over-three-year (Yo3Y) comparison, July 2021 saw 2.4% fewer visitors than July 2018. But when the casino opened in August 2021, visits to the location jumped to 31.4% Yo3Y. This increase is all the more impressive considering that the casino opened on August 19th, with only 12 days left in the month.
The mall, which had seen negative Yo3Y visit numbers until the casino’s opening, has sustained the positive visit trend through July 2022 – a testament to the appeal of in-mall entertainment.
Another mall betting on indoor entertainment is the Pierre Bossier Mall in Bossier City, Louisiana. In April 2022, Surge Entertainment opened a child-friendly space, which includes zip-lining, bowling, laser tag and arcade games. The Surge Entertainment chain is co-owned by Drew Brees, the former New Orleans Saints quarterback, and has 15 locations around the country. The Pierre Bossier Mall branch is filling the space vacated by Virginia College, which closed its doors in 2018.
Since Surge Entertainment opened its Bossier City location, the mall has seen a dramatic increase in average dwell time.
Since Surge Entertainment opened its Bossier City location, the mall has seen a dramatic increase in average dwell time. Between July 2021 and March 2022, median dwell time hovered between 51 and 58 minutes. But following the center’s opening, median dwell time jumped to 78 minutes. Since then, the median dwell time has remained consistently elevated: In the four months since the Surge Entertainment opening, median dwell times did not drop below 75 minutes.
Brick-and-mortar retailers once viewed online shopping as a threat – but now, mall owners and operators are increasingly turning to digital channels to complement existing approaches. COVID-19 and the surge of online shopping further fueled malls’ digital progress. Over the past two years, large malls and suburban shopping centers across the country have been rolling out various online and social shopping options and adopting omnichannel strategies.
In September 2020, Centennial, a real estate investment firm with many malls and mixed-use entertainment centers in its portfolio, launched a chain-wide omnichannel platform called Shop Now!. The app allows consumers to shop across all Centennial malls the way someone would shop on Amazon.
The first phase of the program, which launched in October 2020, allowed users to browse an AI-powered search engine connected to the inventory of all of the stores operating in their mall of interest. In February 2022, Centennial debuted phase two of the program at its Santa Ana, CA based MainPlace Mall. It allows customers to consolidate orders from several stores into a single cart, get the order fulfilled by personal shoppers, and have the orders ready for same-day delivery or on-site pickup.
The e-commerce app could have detracted shoppers from physically going to the mall – but instead, the program increased both monthly and loyal visitors.
The app allows consumers to browse and shop from the comfort of their phones. It could have detracted shoppers from physically going to the mall – but instead, the program has increased both monthly and loyal visitors. In the months following the launch of the second phase, MainPlace Mall saw its loyal visits increase by 5% (from 46.2% in February ‘22 to 51.3% in June ‘22), while overall monthly visits in April ‘22 increased by 5.5% when compared to 2019. The digital investment also helped the mall make sales that could have been lost to other e-commerce platforms. The mall’s brick-and-mortar success following the addition of a digital channel highlights how malls can rise to the top by embracing an omnichannel strategy.
Continuing its innovative streak, the MainPlace Mall recently added an experiential component with the opening the American Ninja Warrior Adventure Park in July 2022 in the place of four former retail stores. During its first month of operation, the park drove the mall’s share of loyal visits up by 13.4% compared to the previous month while boosting Yo3Y monthly visits by 18.0%.
The difference in impact between the online platform launch and the opening of the American Ninja Warrior Adventure Park indicates that malls can enjoy both gradual gains over time as well as jumps in foot traffic and loyalty, depending on the strategy they adopt.
Omnichannel strategies can also revitalize food courts hit hard by the pandemic. Arundel Mills Mall, part of the Simon Property Group, began offering online orders in February 2022 via a platform called Snackpass, allowing users to use the app at various eateries around the mall. Snackpass, launched in 2017 as a food ordering app on the Yale campus, facilitates group ordering and includes various social features. Its current iteration allows customers to pre-order food, skip lines, collect rewards, and engage with friends. It also offers discounts on group orders, in an effort to promote social dining.
Since the beginning of the Snackpass partnership, the shopping center itself is seeing more visitors – many of whom are coming from farther away.
Since the beginning of the Snackpass partnership, the shopping center itself is seeing more visitors – many of whom are coming from farther away. In the five months following the app’s launch, Arundel Mills saw an overall increase of 15 square miles to its True Trade Area (TTA), and an increase of 29.5% in visits per sq. ft. – The consistent increase in TTA and visits per sq. ft. are a testament to the power of innovative dining partnerships to draw traffic to top-tier malls.
With many retailers reducing their on-mall presence, empty brick-and-mortar stores have attracted plenty of negative attention. But now, malls are increasingly repurposing vacated spaces in new, innovative ways that resonate with local communities and can fill their evolving needs.
At the Ocean County Mall in Toms River, NJ, Simon Property Group repurposed the huge space left by a former Sears store and turned it into a lifestyle center, with stores opening throughout 2020. The space is now being used by a number of highly popular chains such as LA Fitness, Ulta Beauty, HomeSense, and P.F. Chang’s and also includes a children's play area.
This pivot seems to be working. Median dwell time to the mall has increased from 53 minutes to 56 minutes, a significant change when considering that a majority of malls have recently seen their dwell times drop.
The center has also seen the median age for its trade area decrease from 40.5 years old in the first half of 2021 to 37.2 in the first half of 2022, a dramatic shift in visitor demographics. Yo3Y visits are strong as well – July 2022 were up by 17.1%.
In a similar tale of a closed Sears turning into a lifestyle center, the Northshore Mall in Peabody, MA turned the space vacated by the department store into a mixed-use center. The most significant anchor is now the high-end Life Time Fitness Center that offers cardio, weights, and functional training rooms, and includes yoga, pilates, and cycling studios, indoor and outdoor pools, basketball and pickleball courts, saunas, and a bistro.
As soon as the health club opened its doors in July 2021, visits to the mall increased – significantly outpacing the levels seen when Sears was still open.
As soon as the health club opened its doors in July 2021, visits to the mall increased – significantly outpacing the levels seen when Sears was still open. Both Yo3Y and year-over-four-year (Yo4Y) foot traffic numbers were impressive, with July 2022 seeing 17.2% more visitors than three years prior.
As visits to malls become more focussed, selecting the right tenant has never been more important – and that may mean looking at unconventional occupants to draw in customers.
In one example of tapping into local needs, the Westfield Oakridge shopping center in San Jose, CA, opened a specialty grocery store on its premises. 99 Ranch Market, one of the largest Asian supermarket chains in the U.S., began operating its first mall location in March 2022. The location includes classic grocery store items such as produce, meat, and seafood sections, and also boasts a dining hall, tea bar, and bakery.
Its opening day saw lines snaking out the door, as excited locals queued to sample the store’s delicacies. And the crowd-drawing hype seems to be more than a flash in the pan – the months following the opening were the mall’s strongest in the past year and a half. Yo3Y visits were up by 10.1% in July 2022 , with some shoppers reporting that the addition of the grocery store had turned Westfield Oakridge into their all-in-one stop shop.
Although the area was not lacking in grocery options, retail foot traffic data indicates that the new 99 Ranch Market at Westfield Oakridge Mall still filled a void.
Although the area was not lacking in grocery options, retail foot traffic data indicates that the new 99 Ranch Market at Westfield Oakridge Mall still filled a void – the new grocery store’s trade area has only minimal overlaps with the other trade areas of the nearby 99 Ranch Markets locations. This means that most of the new 99 Ranch Market’s customers were not being well-served by the existing locations of the chain.
Westfield Oakridge is not the only San Jose mall turning to food to attract the crowds. On June 16th 2022, following much hype and a pandemic-related delay, Eataly, the all-in-one Italian market, restaurant, and cooking school opened its first Northern California location at the Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara, CA.
Prior to the launch, the Westfield Valley Fair mall was already one of the more successful malls in the country – but the opening of Eataly seems to be driving even more foot traffic. Yo3Y visits to malls during Eataly’s opening week exceeded 20% for the first time in months and have since remained consistently elevated, with visits for the week of July 25th up 27.7% relative to the equivalent week in 2019.
In March 2022, regional department store Von Maur opened its doors at The Village of Rochester Hills, an open-air lifestyle center in Michigan. The retailer, which has 36 locations throughout the Midwest, took over the space left vacant by Carson’s, another Midwest-based department store.
What may be the first new department store in the Detroit metropolitan area in over a decade is driving visits to the shopping center.
What may be the first new department store in the Detroit metropolitan area in over a decade is driving visits to the shopping center. Von Maur’s March 2022 opening pushed Yo3Y visits up by 16.9% compared to the mere 4.3% Yo3Y increase the month before.
Part of the secret to Von Maur’s success lies in the psychographic characteristics of residents within the mall’s trade area. Using Spatial.ai’s GeoWeb data, a tool which tracks online engagement with various trends and topics by neighborhood, we found that the TTA surrounding The Village had an index of 131 for department store shoppers. In other words, people in the mall’s trade area exhibited heightened interest in department stores – they engaged with department-store-related content at a rate that was 1.3 times higher than the national average – which helps explain why Von Maur is thriving in this specific location. And in another testament to the strength of immersive retail experiences, Von Maur, which focuses on curating a unique shopper journey and features a pianist at all of its locations, has been ranked the top department store in America.
The addition of Von Maur is not the only change that The Village is implementing – the mall has continued adding new stores and will be opening more throughout the year. These, too, will likely boost foot traffic to the lifestyle center.
The mall’s ability to select tenants that cater to, and reflect the needs and behaviors of its consumers is likely to continue driving success. By drilling down into the nitty-gritty details of who comes to shop, where they come from, and what shops they enjoy frequenting, mall management can tailor the shopping center to meet the needs of its base.
The “death of the American mall” has been predicted for years. The reality, however, is much more nuanced than that – like many other sectors, malls are undergoing a shift to help them better serve evolving customer needs and survive and thrive in an ever-shifting retail landscape.
The malls featured in this white paper have found ways to consistently attract visitors despite the various obstacles faced by the category over the past two years. By understanding that the American mall must evolve along with the consumers, mall owners can successfully revitalize their retail spaces.
This report leverages location intelligence data to analyze the auto dealership market in the United States. By looking at visit trends to branded showrooms, used car lots, and mixed inventory dealerships – and analyzing the types of visitors that visit each category – this white paper sheds light on the state of car dealership space in 2023.
Prior to the pandemic and throughout most of 2020, visits to both car brand and used-only dealerships followed relatively similar trends. But the two categories began to diverge in early 2021.
Visits to car brand dealerships briefly returned to pre-pandemic levels in mid-2021, but traffic fell consistently in the second half of the year as supply-chain issues drove consistent price increases. So despite the brief mid-year bump, 2021 ended with overall new car sales – as well as overall foot traffic to car brand dealerships – below 2019 levels. Visits continued falling in 2022 as low inventory and high prices hampered growth.
Meanwhile, although the price for used cars rose even more (the average price for a new and used car was up 12.1% and 27.1% YoY, respectively, in September 2021), used cars still remained, on average, more affordable than new ones. So with rising demand for alternatives to public transportation – and with new cars now beyond the reach of many consumers – the used car market took off and visits to used car dealerships skyrocketed for much of 2021 and into 2022. But in the second half of last year, as gas prices remained elevated – tacking an additional cost onto operating a vehicle – visits to used car dealerships began falling dramatically.
Now, the price of both used and new cars has finally begun falling slightly. Foot traffic data indicates that the price drops appear to be impacting the two markets differently. So far this year, sales and visits to dealerships of pre-owned vehicles have slowed, while new car sales grew – perhaps due to the more significant pent-up demand in the new car market. The ongoing inflation, which has had a stronger impact on lower-income households, may also be somewhat inhibiting used-car dealership visit growth. At the same time, foot traffic to used car dealerships did remain close to or slightly above 2019 levels for most of 2023, while visits to branded dealerships were significantly lower year-over-four-years.
The situation remains dynamic – with some reports of prices creeping back up – so the auto dealership landscape may well continue to shift going into 2024.
With car prices soaring, the demand for pre-owned vehicles has grown substantially. Analyzing the trade area composition of leading dealerships that sell used cars reveals the wide spectrum of consumers in this market.
Dealerships carrying a mixed inventory of both new and used vehicles seem to attract relatively high-income consumers. Using the STI: Popstats 2022 data set to analyze the trade areas of Penske Automotive, AutoNation, and Lithia Auto Stores – which all sell used and new cars – reveals that the HHI in the three dealerships’ trade areas is higher than the nationwide median. Differences did emerge within the trade areas of the mixed inventory car dealerships, but the range was relatively narrow – between $77.5K to $84.5K trade area median HHI.
Meanwhile, the dealerships selling exclusively used cars – DriveTime, Carvana, and CarMax – exhibited a much wider range of trade area median HHIs. CarMax, the largest used-only car dealership in the United States, had a yearly median HHI of $75.9K in its trade area – just slightly below the median HHI for mixed inventory dealerships Lithia Auto Stores and AutoNation and above the nationwide median of $69.5K. Carvana, a used car dealership that operates according to a Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPIS) model, served an audience with a median HHI of $69.1K – more or less in-line with the nationwide median. And DriveTime’s trade areas have a median HHI of $57.6K – significantly below the nationwide median.
The variance in HHI among the audiences of the different used-only car dealerships may reflect the wide variety of offerings within the used-car market – from virtually new luxury vehicles to basic sedans with 150k+ miles on the odometer.
Visits to car brands nationwide between January and September 2023 dipped 0.9% YoY, although several outliers reveal the potential for success in the space even during times of economic headwinds.
Visits to Tesla’s dealerships have skyrocketed recently, perhaps thanks to the company’s frequent price cuts over the past year – between September 2022 and 2023, the average price for a new Tesla fell by 24.7%. And with the company’s network of Superchargers gearing up to serve non-Tesla Electric Vehicles (EVs), Tesla is finding room for growth beyond its already successful core EV manufacturing business and positioning itself for a strong 2024.
Japan-based Mazda used the pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen its standing among U.S. consumers, and the company is now reaping the fruits of its labor as visits rise YoY. Porsche, the winner of U.S New & World Report Best Luxury Car Brand for 2023, also outperformed the wider car dealership sector. Kia – owned in part by Hyundai – and Hyundai both saw their foot traffic increase YoY as well, thanks in part to the popularity of their SUV models.
Analyzing dealerships on a national level can help car manufacturers make macro-level decisions on marketing, product design, and brick-and-mortar fleet configurations. But diving deeper into the unique characteristics of each dealership’s trade area on a state level reveals differences that can serve brands looking to optimize their offerings for their local audience.
For example, analyzing the share of households with children in the trade areas of four car brand dealership chains in four different states reveals significant variation across the regional markets.
Nationwide, Tesla served a larger share of households with children than Kia, Ford, or Land Rover. But focusing on California shows that in the Golden State, Kia’s trade area population included the largest share of this segment than the other three brands, while Land Rover led this segment in Illinois. Meanwhile, Ford served the smallest share of households with children on a nationwide basis – but although the trend held in Illinois and Pennsylvania, California Ford dealerships served more households with children than either Tesla or Land Rover.
Leveraging location intelligence to analyze car dealerships adds a layer of consumer insights to industry provided sales numbers. Visit patterns and audience demographics reveal how foot traffic to used-car lots, mixed inventory dealerships, and manufacturers’ showrooms change over time and who visits these businesses on a national or regional level. These insights allow auto industry stakeholders to assess current demand, predict future trends, and keep a finger on the pulse of car-purchasing habits in the United States.
