It's fair to say that the so-called retail apocalypse has hurt certain malls. In some cases, store closures by major chains including Sears, J.C. Penney, Macy's, and others have left malls with huge spaces to fill and limited options when it comes to stores of that size. In other cases, some lesser malls have been hurt by a combination of losing anchor tenants and smaller stores.
Success varies when it comes to different concepts being tested to fill open spots in malls in a way that draws in customers. Foursquare examined data from nearly 1,000 malls to see how foot traffic changes when a certain type of venue or a specific retailer opens.
"Our goal was to uncover what data says the 'Mall of the Future' looks like," wrote Foursquare's Felix Puetsch and Mike Schoppmann. The research found that not every idea to fill space works as well as others.
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