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Most of Generation X through Z spent a good deal of their free time frolicking through their local mall with money to burn and entertainment on their minds.
Each mall is centered around the needs of every member of a family with bookstores, toy stores and even music stores, making the mall a convenient place for the average American family to shop.
The local mall was the place to be with popular events like concerts, meet-and-greets, as well as the classic holiday setups for Christmas and Easter. You could find most people you knew there.
Today, we are seeing a flood of online shoppers.
Online shopping outlets such as Amazon and fast fashion apps allow average shoppers to easily retrieve what they need from the comfort of their own bedroom. This is causing the malls to have scarce business.
When I began working inside my local mall last year, I saw firsthand how shoppers prefer convenience over quality. Hours would pass by with only a few customers walking around.
Working in the coffee shop smack dab in the middle of the mall, I received various opinions on stores and the contents inside them.
On occasion I noticed that while waiting for their coffee, the customer is on their phone browsing online shops.
Even I was guilty of convenience shopping.
While having clothing stores 50 feet away from me, I would still stand there in my kiosk and order from Amazon, expecting it at my front door within 10 hours.
Amazon provides fashion at your fingertips, but what they do not share with their consumers is that the product most likely will not look like the picture.
Usually, the product we receive is not the one we expected, nor wanted. While it is easy to order something, it takes much more labor to return it. The average shopper is too lazy.
Then, because the return process requires leaving the house, most products that need to be exchanged sit in a closet and become forgotten.
Why do we continue to go through this process even though it inevitably burns us each time?
The mall used to be a fun, colorful experience. The real reason we now see the mall as dull and gray is because we as a society caused it to be.
With malls being left behind, we are also leaving the uniqueness with it.
On top of receiving subpar items from online, we are no longer using the mall as a social ground as we used to.
The mall used to be an experience rather than a shopping trip.
If we can trade our beds for the public mall, we could solve our own problems, and our community won’t depend on the internet for all their needs.
Our laziness is hurting the mall community. We can now see that store managers are having to increase the price of their items due to the lack of business.
Deciding to return to the malls for our fashion needs will benefit us in the long run, ensuring we know what we buy each time. It will also save us money and possibly help us make a friend.