business research method

Research Data

a description of the data sources, and the data itself, used to prove your research hypothesis + reliability

https://www.statista.com/statistics/874169/mall-shoppers-reasons-for-shopping-at-malls-instead-of-online-channels-us/

Statista.com is a statistics website. It also includes market studies, and a business intelligence portal. It gives access to market data and opinion data of research institutions. This is one of the most reliable statistical database. It contains more than 1,500,000 statistics on more than 80,000 subjects from more than 18,000 sources. As a consequence we think that de data that we got from statista.com are reliable.

This graphic is called "Mall shoppers' reasons for shopping at malls instead of online in the United States as of 2018". We didn’t get the chance to see the actual reasons of why people preferred to go in malls to purchase their items. However, on the side it’s written that in 2018, 60% of respondents said that they were more likely to shop for apparel in a mall as opposed to online.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/894879/shopping-malls-sales-productivity-canada/

This one is called "Sales productivity in shopping malls in Canada from 2014 to 2017 (in Canadian dollars per square foot". As we can see on this graph, in Canada, between 2014 and 2017, the number of sales productivity per square foot kept growing but is growing slowly.

Between 2014 and 2015, the sales productivity increased by $54. Between 2015 and 2016 it increased by $18. And between 2017 and 2017 it increased by $9.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/subjects/retail_and_wholesale

http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=2447

statcan.gc.ca is the governmental statistical office of Canada. As a consequence, they have a lot of devoted researchers and have access to every micro-data in Canada which make the data reliable. In addition, they always show the data sources, and the methodology that they used to gather the data. They describe, the target population, the sampling and the instrument design. They also describe the data accuracy by giving the response rate, the non-sampling error, the non-response bias, and the coverage error.

As we can see, the sales kept increasing for the in-store sales and the e-commerce sales. Between 2013 and 2017, the sales increased by 88,451,914 for the In-Store sales. And for the e-commerce sales, it increased by 2,549,996.

Watson, S. (2016). What is happening to commercial malls: Evaluating contradicting opinions?

This these is written by Sarah Watson a student of University at Albany, State University of New York and is titled "What is happening to commercial malls: Evaluating contradicting opinions?". We decided to include a these because thesis tend to be more specific and written for knowledgeable people and also they contain a good overview. She cited all of her references in her these.

Sarah highlights the fact that in the US no malls were built after 2006 and that malls were closing. She also highlight the fact that people want to pay less and that on online platforms the prices were lower. Only 3 percent of malls were dying which means that 97 percent of them are not.

https://www.icsc.org/uploads/default/Envision-2020-Report.pdf

This report is from the ICSC Board of Trustees which is the International Council of Shopping Centers. "The Board of Trustees consists of 52-57 members elected by the ICSC membership. The trustees provide critical input in helping ICSC achieve its goal of serving our members with excellence and proactively advocating and communicating the critical social, civic and economic role played by the retail real estate industry across the globe." This is the global trade association of the shopping center industry. It includes 70,000 members in over 100 countries. It is made up of shopping center owners, developers, managers, marketing specialists, investors, retailers and brokers, as well as academics and public officials which can lead us to think that their data are reliable.

According to them 90 percent of all U.S. retail sales still occur “within the four walls of a physical store,” according to a report by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

Malls owners know that the e-tailing market is growing. That’s why they are adapting their strategy to please and respond to the customers’ new needs. They are using IA, malls are becoming a community center more than just a place where you can get your items. E-tailing is often a complement for the malls. That is to say that when people buy their items in malls, they buy the rest of what they want or need online.

In fact it is written in the report: "According to a report by consulting firm A.T. Kearney, studies have found that 23 percent of customers purchase additional items when picking up an online order from stores. Retailers also report that up to 20 percent of consumers who return an online purchase to a store make an additional purchase while they are onsite, according to A.T. Kearney."

http://www.marcumllp.com/pdf/articles/RonaldFriedman-TIME-07202017.pdf

This article was written by Josh Sanburn in 2017 and it titled "Why the Death of Malls is About More Than Shopping". Sanburn is a writer for TIME. He doesn’t cite any of its references. As a consequence this is not a peer-reviewed article which lead us to doubt the reliability of this article because of all the bias that can be in it.

Josh Sanburn says in this articles that according to analysts, by 2022 in the US, 1 mall out of 4 will be closed because of the changing tastes of the consumers and the increasing market of e-tailing.