‘Mallmaxxing’: Gen Z is bringing the mall back from near-death in welcome news for under-pressure retailers

Against all odds, Australia’s most-digitally native generation is leading an unexpected return to malls.

It’s generally been accepted young consumers don’t need physical retail amid the growing popularity of online shopping.

But after predictions Generation Z would spell the end of shopping malls, experts say it’s this cohort that is now powering the revival of bricks-and-mortar retail.

It comes after a prolonged period of major retailers sounding the alarm on weak consumer spending.

New research commissioned by social media platform Snapchat revealed nearly half of Australian Gen Z have increased their visits to physical stores over the past 12 months — the highest of any generation surveyed, more than four times higher than baby boomers and nearly double the national average.

Almost half of Gen Z also said they were spending more in physical stores than a year ago — significantly outpacing millennials (33 per cent), Gen X (21 per cent) and baby boomers (29 per cent).

Dubbed “mallmaxxing”, the trend captures something bigger than purchasing an item — lunch with friends, trying on outfits, sending mirror selfies to the group chat.

Capturing this aesthetic are cinematic retail royalties Cher Horowitz from the 1995 film Clueless and The Plastics from Mean Girls.

“What this research makes clear is that Gen Z’s hunger for connection is powering a physical retail revival that nobody predicted,” Snap ANZ managing director Ryan Ferguson said.

“Products are discovered, validated and celebrated in the group chat and the store is where that social decision comes to life.

“Everyone assumed the survival of physical retail would be carried by older generations — the grey nomads who never quite trusted the online checkout.”

The Snapchat survey of more than 2000 consumers found nearly 80 per cent of Gen Z said physical retail created memories that online shopping could not replicate, while 46 per cent said the in-store experience was as important as the product itself.

About 40 per cent say they visit shopping centres primarily to spend time with friends.

The data also found the shopping trip started in the group chat, with 77 per cent of Gen Z saying they share photos or videos with friends while trying on clothes in fitting rooms, while 64 per cent say a positive group chat response has led them to make a purchase.

“After predictions that online shopping would spell the end of the mall, Gen Z are proving there is still plenty of life in the shopping trip,” consumer behaviour and retail expert Gary Mortimer, from Queensland University of Technology, said.

“The data indicating older generations are less likely to frequent physical malls, favouring instead online, makes sense. These consumer cohorts are often busy with careers, raising children and moving into retirement.

“But Gen Z are different: they may first hear about a product online, but stores give them the chance to touch, try and experience it for themselves and to make an occasion of it with friends.”

It comes just weeks after the boss of Vicinity Centres — which owns some of the nation’s biggest shopping centres like Chadstone and Emporium in Melbourne, as well as Lakeside Joondalup in WA — said its customers remained resilient despite the cost-of-living pressures in the economy.

“Despite the rhetoric that’s in the marketplace at the moment, it was categories such as eating out, jewellery, going to cinemas that were actually leading the way in terms of our July sales,” chief executive Peter Huddle said last month.