A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MALL
Richard A. Feinberg, Purdue University
Jennifer Meoli, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
America
has been "Malled." The "air-conditioned, sanitized, standardized"
shopping malls "have become the new Main Streets of America" (Consumer
Reports, 1986). Along with power mowers, "the pill," antibiotics. smoke
detectors, transistors, and personal computers, the shopping mall was
selected as one of the top 50 wonders that has revolutionized the lives
of consumers (Consumer Reports, 1986). Because alternative retail
settings may differ in important economic, social, and psychological
characteristics, the shopping mall may exert a significant influence on
individual and collective consumer behavior.
Why
then has there been so little attention to the mall by the consumer
research community, either as an important setting for consumer behavior
or a social and consumer phenomenon in and of itself? While we can
find Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris defending malls against
evil doers and Michael J. Fox taking off back to the future from the
mall in recent movies, we would be hard pressed to find a scholarly
treatment in our best journals.
History of Shopping Centers
Shopping
malls didn't just happen. They are not the result of wise planners
deciding that suburban people, having no social life and stimulation,
needed a place to go (Bombeck, 1985). The mall was originally conceived
of as a community center where people would converge for shopping,
cultural activity, and social interaction (Gruen & Smith, 1960). It
is safe to say that the mall has achieved and surpassed those early
expectations. In today's consumer culture the mall is the center of the
universe.
According to the history of shopping
centers provided by Consumer Reports (1986, for other histories of the
shopping center see Jacobs, 1985; Kowinski, 1985) shopping centers had
their birth in the 1920's in California where supermarkets would anchor
and serve as a magnet for a strip of smaller stores. According to
Samuel Feinberg (1960) shopping centers got their start a bit earlier,
in 1907, in a Baltimore neighborhood where a group of stores
established off-street parking. In 1922 The Country Club Plaza in
suburban Kansas City, a group of stores only accessible by car, was
built. In 1931 the Highland Park Shopping Village in Dallas became the
first group of stores that had its own parking lot with the stores
facing away from the access road. The first enclosed mall was developed
in a suburb of Minneapolis in 1956. Designed to get the shopper out of
the harsh weather, it introduced the world to shopping complexes as
worlds unto themselves--free from bad weather, life, crime, dirt and
troubles. It is somehow fitting that the largest mall in the United
States, called "The Mall of America," is now nearing completion outside
Minneapolis.
Whatever and wherever its start,
the phenomenal growth and development of shopping centers naturally
followed the migration of population out from the cities and paralleled
the growth of the use of the automobile. By 1960 there were 4500 malls
accounting for 14% of retail sales. By 1975 there were 16,400 shopping
centers accounting for 33% of retail sales . In 1987, there were 30,000
malls accounting for over 50% of all retail dollars spent (about 676
billion dollars, 8% of the labor force, and 13% of our gross national
product--Keinfield, 1986; Turchiana, 1990).
Malls
are now the retail, social and community centers of their communities.
Indeed, shopping malls are the center pieces for rejuvenation of urban
centers (e.g., City-Center Indianapolis, Faneuil Hall - Boston, South
Street Seaport - New York City, Harbour Place Baltimore). 'Some malls
are so large that they are communities. Chicago's Water Tower place has
hotels, restaurants, offices, stores, restaurants, and residential
units. The West Edmonton Mall in Canada, The largest mall in the world,
has over 800 stores, ice skating, 24 movie screens.
Despite
unsupported forecasts that the country is over-malled (e.g.,
Turchiana, 1990) the increasing dominance of malls seems inevitable
(Ballard, 1981; Burstiner, 1986). Many of these malls will be smaller
strip centers ("Overbuilding: A real...," 1987), but there are plans
for mega-malls modeled after the Edmonton Mall (Martin, 1987).
The
competitive environment that a mall faces today is considerably
different from that faced in their early days when their primary
competition was a downtown business district. Many of the best
"locations" are gone so that a mall's primary competition is now likely
to be another mall. Shopping malls- appear to be in a mature phase of
the retail life cycle where market shares and sales may be leveling off
(Sternlieb & Hughs, 1981). The challenges that face developers
within this context will have to become more consumer oriented in the
sense that more attention will need to be paid to the why, when, what,
who, where, and how's of the consumer when it comes to all aspects of
"the shopping mall" (for a complete review of published articles on
shopping centers before 1982 see Dawson, 1982).
Research on Shopping Malls
Research
on mall issues can be characterized as mainly centering on models of
mall patronage/choice (e.g., Cox & Cooke, 1970; Howell & Rogers,
1981). These models have been guided by retail gravitational
approaches. These approaches assume that a mall will be differentially
attractive as a function of their utility. Research has identified a
variety of factors that could define the utility of a mall: distance
traveled - Bucklin, 1971; travel time - Brunner & Mason, 1968;
accessibility Bucklin & Gautschi, 1983; size of mall -Bucklin,
1967; number of brands carried - Crask, 1979; number of stores -
Weisbrod, Parcells, & Kern, 1984. The inability of these various
studies to adequately account for mall patronage has led to studies
focusing on more "subjective" types of variables such as social factors
(Feinberg, Meoli, & Sheffler, 1989) and mall image and mall image
variables (e.g., Gentry & Burns, 1977-1978; Nevin & Houston,
1980). Unfortunately these too have not led to overwhelming success and
acceptance.
The enviable success and impact of
the shopping mall may have something to do with the potential of
shopping malls to enhance community life. There is no conflict between
shopping malls, profits, and people. The basis for a shopping mall is to
make it an "indispensable servant of the community" (Rouse, 1962).
Right now consumer research seems to be on the sidelines of this
phenomena. However, like the lead pack dog, since the mall is at its
basics a consumer phenomenon, consumer researchers should be making the
dust, not eating it.
REFERENCES
Ballard,
C. (1981), 'Trends in Retail Development: 1980's and Beyond," In
George Sternlieb and James Hughes (Eds), Shopping Centers: USA, New
Jersey: State University of New Jersey, Center For Urban Policy
Research.
Bombeck, E (1985), "Lost Forever In A Shopping Mall," The Daily News, Sunday- December 22, p. 16.
Brunner,
J., and Mason, J. (1968), "The Influence Of Driving Time Upon Shopping
Center Performance," Journal of Marketing, 32, 57-61.
Bucklin, L. (1967), 'The Concept In Mass In Intra-urban Shopping," Journal of Marketing, 32, 32-36.
Bucklin,
L. (1971), "Retail Gravity Models and Consumer Choice: A Theoretical
and Empirical Critique," Economic Geography,47, 489-497.
Bucklin,
L. and Gautschi, D. (1983), "The Importance Of Travel Mode Factors in
the Patronage of Retail Centers," In William Darden and Robert Lusch
(Eds), Patronage and Retail Management, New York: Elsevier Science
Publishing Company.
Burstiner, I. (1986),
"Retailing For the Next Twenty Years: Looking Forward In Time," Basic
Retailing, Il: Irwin Publishing, 648-671.
Consumer
Reports (1986), I'll Buy that: 50 small wonders and big deals that
revolutionized the lives of consumers, New York: Consumers Union of the
United States .
Cox, W., and Cooke,E. (1970), "Other Dimensions Involved In Shopping Center Preference," Journal of Marketing, 34, 12-17.
Crask, M. (1979), "A Simulation Model of Patronage Behavior Within Shopping Centers," Decision Sciences, 10, 1 -15.
Dawson, J. (1982), Shopping Centers: A Bibliography, Il: Council of Planning Librarians.
Feinberg,
R., Meoli, J., dc Sheffler, B (1989), "There's Something Social
Happening At The Mall," Journal of Business and Psychology, 4, 44-63.
Feinberg, S (1960), What Makes Shopping Malls Tick, New York: Fairchild Publications.
Gentry,
J., and Burns, A. (1977-1978), "How Important Are Evaluative Criteria
In Shopping Center Patronage," Journal of Retailing, 53, 7386.
Gruen, V., and Smith, L. (1960), Shopping Towns, U.SA.: The Planning of Shopping Centers. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Howell,
R., and Rogers, J. (1981), "Research Into Shopping Mall Choice
Behavior,", In K. Monroe (Ed.), Advances In Consumer Research, 8, MI:
Association for Consumer Research, 671-676.
Jacobs, J. (1986), The Mall: An Attempted Escape From Everyday Life, IL: Waveland Press.
Keinfeld, N. (1986), "Why Everyone Goes To The Mall," The New York Times, December 21, Sec 3, F1, F33.
Kowinski, W (1985) The Malling Of America: An Inside Look At The Great Consumer Paradise, New York: W. Morrow.
Martin,
D. (1987), "Behemoth On The Prairie: In Edmonton The World's Largest
Mall Mixes Shopping And Show Business," The New York Times, January 4,
19-20, 29.
Nevin, J., and Houston, M. (1980),
''Image As A Component Of Attraction to Intra-urban Shopping Areas,"
Journal of Retailing, 56, 77-93.
"Overbuilding: A Real or Imagined Issue" (1987), Chain Store Age Executive, 63, 48-50.
Rouse, J. (1962), "Must Shopping Centers Be Inhuman," Architectural Forum, 116, 105-119.
Sternlieb,
G., and Hughs, J. (1981), Shopping Centers: USA, New Jersey: State
University of New Jersey, Center For Urban Policy Research.
Turchiana, F. (1990), "The Unmalling of America," American Demographics, April, 36-39.
Weisbrod,
G., Parcells, R., and Kern, C. (1984), "A Disaggregate Model For
Predicting Shopping Area Market Attraction," Journal of Retailing, 60,
65-83.
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