You can slice and dice demographics a million ways – literally – these days and the folks at Placer.ai are among the best at dissecting the numbers when it comes to shopping and purchasing patterns.
Their latest findings are absolutely fascinating. They set out to see what type of shopping mall format – indoor malls versus open-air shopping centers versus outlet malls – tended to have the most spending power and were therefore doing best.
What they found was that open-air centers drew the highest income shoppers based on their trading areas. They found they had a median household income of $87,000 in 2023. They also had the highest share of singles (one-person and non-family households) and the lowest share of households with children.
At the other end of the shopping spectrum were outlet malls, with a trade area median income level of $73,900, the highest share of households with children and the lowest share of single households.
Indoor malls finished in the middle of these ranges for all criteria. Interestingly enough the trade areas for all three shopping formats had higher income level than the nationwide media, which is $69,500.
Looking ahead to this year, Placer.ai wrote, “For the most part, malls – especially indoor malls and open-air shopping centers – succeeded in exceeding or staying close to 2022 visit levels last year, despite the economic headwinds. And while January data indicates that the space may be entering a challenging period, there are plenty of reasons to think that the dip in early 2024 foot traffic is just a temporary setback driven by a unique set of circumstances.”
The traffic monitoring service added, “As the year continues to unfold, tracking visits in this sector will offer more insights into the state of the 2024 consumer.”