Browsing or buying: Adding shop dynamics and additional mall visit constraints in regional versus city mall simulations

The attraction of shopping malls as a retailing structure can be explained by the interrelationships that exist between stores and the benefits these provide consumers. Malls can provide centers or anchors, (department and supermarkets) and reasons to prolong a shopping trip (such as coffee, snacks and meals), which benefit in an ecological sense other retailers. This paper extends the work by Duncan, Bossomaier, D’Alessandro, & Murphy (2015b) by including different distributions of shops versus entertainment /service options which model the trade-off of a consumer staying longer. Our results show that smaller regional malls with their distribution of shops biased to larger consumer expenditure are more vulnerable to economic shocks than are larger city malls with a distribution of shops catering for mid-consumer expenditure. The results suggest that the decline in the number of shops in the services category may be a lead indicator for the sudden collapse of regional malls.