he same answer. “I don’t know.” In any case, grouping online sales together is not clever. Online sales in some categories will continue to grow much faster than in other categories. Also, it depends how smart B&M retailers become as opposed to online competitors and how these online competitors respond. Malls will close as they have in the US. The death sentence is generally accepted to be when occupancy reaches 70 per cent. Once this happens, the mall is doomed. Headlines such as ‘Dead malls: Half of America’s shopping centres predicted to close by 2030′ and ‘America’s Shopping Malls are dying a slow, ugly death’ are now commonplace. But that is in the US you say. Well, our own Business Insider reports that “The Shopping Mall Crisis Is Getting More Ominous”. This follows a similar article a year previous. What we will probably see is what I describe as blended retail. So what is blended retail? It is a kind of hybrid B&M/online shopping experience. Essentially a compromised bricks and mortar model assisted through technology and information available online. This is how it may look. Self service Customers bemoan the lack of service in stores but they better get used to it. B&M stores are going to need to slash wages and that is going to mean more self service. POS Points of sale will move to the front of the store staffed by checkout staff supermarket style. Even upmarket stores will be forced to adopt this practice. POS suppliers will feel the pinch. Silent salesmen Technology will replace staff. Features, price, discounts, availability of say other colours/sizes not only in that store but others, washing instructions, warranties – and any other information a customer could possibly want – will need to be at their fingertips. How this will be achieved will vary from smartphone QR readers to devices provided by the store and perhaps in other ways. This could even include real time bargaining with someone behind the scenes. Security The security industry will boom with cameras and other devices proliferating to compensate for the eyes and ears of staff. Customers will seek out stores where they don’t need to look for staff who are often diffident and not terribly knowledgeable. This is one of the advantages of the internet. You can suss out what you want to reliably and quickly. B&M will survive and so will many shopping centres, but B&M retailers need to beat online retailers at their own game. Reducing staff costs significantly will mean a closing of the gap on retail prices. Representatives of shopping centres in Australia claim that Australia is not the US and that the effect of mall closures will not be felt here for some time. This is probably true. But when the American trend is felt in Australia, we better be ready for it. And so should the landlords! Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing www.impactretailing.com.au and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au.