391–400 of 406 posts
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I am not talking about digital goods.
Neither was I. For many years Netflix actually mailed DVDs (physical goods) to your home.
and yeah I used to get netflix DVDs to my home. and hit blockbuster for many years before that. there was no possible good ending for blockbuster!
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There's no way the returns on investing in making the mall a pleasurable place to hang out in the short term outweigh the costs, but if people depended on malls as part of their area's social fabric, I doubt they would be facing this kind of longer-term decline.
This really depends on which mall you go to. The Mall of America is not far off of Disney's Epcot center in terms of the amenities it provides. The Galleria in Houston is almost a city unto itself. I remember seeing a bridal party walking through it once, I'm guessing there was a chapel or function hall inside. A typical mall in Tampa, Florida, or Salem, NH has less charm, but those areas aren't working from a high b…
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In the US, that market has been taken over by Walmart. It is effectively the "one stop shop" that people visit weekly for everything from groceries to small furniture. Now that I think about it, I wonder if Walmart has had almost as much of a negative impact on malls as Amazon and its ilk have.
An average Walmart is nothing like the malls I'm talking about. Heck, Carrefour itself already provides everything Walmart does, minus maybe the Walmart money and vision centers. Imagine putting a Walmart inside of an average US mall. Now crank up the number of stores and activities to 11. That's how major malls in the UAE are like.
It isn't exactly that one is a substitute for the other, but one managed to effectively destroy the highest grossing businesses of the other.
Also, I've been in a mall in the US that effectively had a Walmart as an anchor. It was "interesting" and strangely it probably contributed to that mall's competitiveness in the area.
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Yeah, but it really feels like they have gotten away from the original vision. I remember when malls had arcades (ok, and outdated concept in itself) and regular community events. But it seems like these don't produce enough revenue, so malls have optimized themselves into a revenue model that removes their natural appeal as a third place. I think that malls could make a huge comeback with a focus on events that natu…
> (ok, and outdated concept in itself) Is it really though? I miss the arcade machines of old. I wonder if anyone has tried bringing some of that concept back...
I feel like the arcade concept could potentially be brought back, but it would require some creative thinking.
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I don't know that it is for online purchases. My wife is buying clothes and shoes off Amazon lately and we are on our third return for one pair of shoes because their size guide online doesn't correspond to what they send us at all. That's a 200% return rate on a single item, and that's only if we get the correct one shipped to us this time. Non commodity items have turned into a major crapshoot online. Online shoppi…
I buy on Amazon a lot and I don't think I return more than one or two things in a year, typically. Even buying shoes online (I usually use Zappos) I haven't returned that many.
Malls hold no interest for me whatsoever. There's nothing there worthwhile, other than employment. Malls have nothing: no libraries, no Good Cafes, no places to hang out, no parks, no museums, no zoos, limited live music, no outdoors. And the few things it does have: like some book stores and places to eat, are all engineered to get you in and out and back to the Mall's singular focus: Spend, spend, spend: shop till…
I'm not going to defend malls, but clearly there needs to be some kind of market place where people can encounter things they don't expect. We are already experiencing a media landscape with a filter bubble. Views become more narrow and extreme. You are going to need to have a place where you see things you think you wouldn't buy or want, otherwise your experience of world is going to get more narrow.
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> Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff. > [...…
Also, I didn't comment on it but the idea that engineers are smarter than other people in the first place sounds like a wildly unfounded assumption
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SPOILER WARNING: stranger things season 1 The reason why free range parenting has gone down so much can be seen in the series. There was a believable scene in which one kid bullied another into taking an almost certainly fatal jump into the quarry, and was only saved by paranormal means. A world in which more free-range parenting is the norm inherently implies a world in which kids more often pay the consequences of…
> There was a believable scene in which one kid bullied another into taking an almost certainly fatal jump into the quarry, and was only saved by paranormal means. I watched it last night so it's fresh in my mind. It was paranormal events that setup this scene and made the bully go to such extremes to begin with. It was also one of the worst, least believable scenes in the series. The fact that he was so willing to j…
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Amazon is extremely good at that, and they have a strong financial motivation to do so. I'll agree with and extend your remarks on a tangent that at one point in human history literacy was nice but not required to participate in the economy. Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic particip…
> Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff. > [...…
This is a pretty odd assumption. Why do you assume that doing your research means valuing money _less_? If anything, I would assume the opposite. I grew up lower middle class with a scholarship to a school full of upper class kids, and doing my research usually meant getting the best value for my money : when you have lots of money, it's often easier to just throw a bunch of money at the most commonly purchased product perceived as luxury instead of spending your time doing research on which provides the best value.