With Gen C of connected consumers now dictating the rules of the retail game, traditional stores seem to have little to offer. The bricks’ perennial argument of “look, touch and feel” is losing power in the face of a growing popularity of showrooming. Should traditional malls be pronounced dead? Or perhaps in-store shopping can be made cool again?

What we are witnessing today is not in fact a demise of brick-and-mortar stores, but a radical change of distribution models of the past. Back in the day, distribution systems were designed in such a way as to generate huge revenues for just a few major market players. With online shopping came a relative democratization of a retail market. Emerging distribution system help a lot of players generate moderate incomes. How can bricks’ respond to that?

Making malls hip again

One of the reasons for the mall’s gradual decline is that they fail to respond to young consumers’ genuine and fast-changing needs. Gone are the days when the malls’ all-time favourites like Gap or Banana Republic made hearts of young shoppers beat faster. Millenials or Gen C prefer to hunt for real treasures online where the choice is much bigger, with e-stores being able to faster react to new trends and fads. Can bricks’ beat that? Probably not, but they can focus on uniqueness instead. Globalisation has its undeniable perks, but it surely made standing out in a crowd so much harder. Smart stores will be quick to identify that niche and offer cool, one -of –a- kind goods that are available in a store round the corner and not around the world.

It’s always about experience

It may sound like a hackneyed slogan, but bricks are still unbeatable when it comes to offering the unique in-store experience, especially at the level of micro-retail. There are few things that make consumer feel more special than finding something they believe is a rare commodity and will distinguish them from a high-street crowd. On top of that, they get a personalized treatment. This new reality leaves little, if any, room for huge shopping malls whose strategy is to appeal to popular tastes. Are shopping malls doomed? No, if they let themselves be changed by young, forward-thinking retailers who will ditch passé high-street labels in favour of low-key coffee shops and pop-up stores with quirky stuff.

SOURCE: TECHCRUNCH.COM