Retail, Malls and Amazon

What's the future of retail? Historically, researchers of retail tend to divide it into 'destination retail' and 'convenience retail'. The former is where you journey to visit one specific place, and the latter when you visit the closest place (Ikea vs. Quik-e-marts). Malls used to succeed by attacking the latter to the former: A couple of big anchor department stores, along with shoes/specialty apparrel, jewelers, toy stores, and a few dentists. In effect, malls were artificial 'central places', created through the low-cost transportation provided by freeways. So, thanks to traffic congestion, that 'surge' of accessibility provided by freeways is gone. It it that big of a surprise that many malls are having a hard time? Now, to get you to drive to a destination (given the increased time/difficulty of doing so), it's really got to be something special: higher quality destination retail, things you can only find in place...which is sort of where Amazon comes in--it provides more of the things you can only find in one place. And so all the malls have to provide something Amazon can't provide: An experience of place.