Traffic on Black Friday after Thanksgiving was materially higher across Advan Indices compared with last year’s levels. But visits are still down compared to 2019 records for most of the indices. Clothing and Accessories index saw an increase of 55% yoy but down 15.3% Yo2Y while Furniture and Food Stores including food stores such as Kirkland’s/Restoration Hardware and Kroger’s and Whole Foods respectively have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. The biggest difference has been observed on Gas Stations index, which saw an increase in traffic of over 66% year-over-two-year as the Americans have been still driving more than they ever did.

Following up from our recent blogpost that we measure the recovery of the Malls, we have revisited all these properties to see how the picture looks like if we incorporate the full month of September. In summary nothing has really changed, the full recovery still remains to be seen. The foot traffic on August was worse across the board while September was slightly better than August on a Yo2Y basis but we are still not in a full recovery territory yet.

There was a location data report published last month called ‘Malls Rise Once Again’ that caught people’s attention. It claimed that malls have made a ‘full COVID recovery’ and have as many visitors as in 2019. We at Advan live and breathe location data, so our intuitive response was ‘no way, how have we missed this… ’. The reality is, while mall traffic has certainly been improving, it is still down 22% versus 2019.

With a new phase of lockdowns beginning across the US, many shoppers have opted to get a jump on Black Friday over the past week. Foot traffic to malls increased steadily across most states other than Texas where case numbers have climbed significantly, although lockdown measures have not yet been imposed. Mall visits in Texas have remained more or less flat since the start of the month. Florida saw a week-over-week increase of 7% in mall traffic, on top of a 3% increase in the prior week.

The biggest mall operator in the US, Simon Group, announced this week that it will open dozens of locations across the US. With Macy’s and other retailers following suit in states where restrictions have been relaxed, investors, consumers and retailers will be watching with interest to see how soon visitor numbers begin to recover. One indicator of customer appetite for returning to stores in the US is to look at how foot traffic to malls in China has fared since restrictions began to be lifted in late February and early March.

Usually the first considerations when a company acquires another is how to realize economies of scale, cross-marketing opportunities, and areas of common improvement. If one knew which shoppers visit each location and quantified the cross-visits between malls then they could make educated decisions about which malls to focus on for improvements, tenant acquisition, or cross marketing. With traditional measuring methods this is hard to achieve, but cellphone location data is the perfect fit for such an exercise.

Department Stores, Restaurants, Malls, all continue growing their traffic on Black Friday on a year over year basis. The growth rate has decelerated a bit, but it’s still in the healthy double-digit numbers, from an already high base. Only Hotels showed negative growth, but less so than in prior years – a weighted average of -1% vs -3% and -2% in 2018 and 2017 respectively. Below are a couple of graphs that illustrate the traffic.