Keeping the mall alive? Identifying drivers of shopping mall satisfaction and survival from customer reviews
Journal
Journal of Retailing
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2026-09-04
Author(s)
de Jong, David
;
;
Ludwig, Stephan
;
Teller, Christoph
;
Villarroel Ordenes, Francisco
;
Grewal, Dhruv
Abstract
As digital commerce expands, shopping malls with similar observable characteristics experience sharply different trajectories, raising the question of why some sustain customer satisfaction and survive while others close. We develop an aspect-based sentiment analysis to extract sentence-level sentiment toward five perceived mall retail environment (PMRE) attributes, mall access, mall atmosphere, cross-store assortment, within-store assortment and price and promotion from more than 250,000 online customer reviews and examine their associations with mall satisfaction and mall survival across two large-scale studies in the United States and the United Kingdom. Review-level analyses show that sentiment toward mall-controlled PMRE attributes, especially cross-store assortment and mall atmosphere, is more strongly associated with mall satisfaction than sentiment toward tenant-controlled PMRE attributes. These associations vary systematically with mall size, population density, and population income. Mall-year survival models show that higher mall satisfaction is associated with higher chance of survival and that satisfaction statistically accounts for the association between PMRE attribute sentiment and survival. This pattern is consistent with satisfaction serving as the central evaluative conduit linking cumulative customer perceptions to long-term mall viability. Together, the findings clarify which controllable PMRE attributes relate most strongly to customer satisfaction, when these associations are strongest, and how aggregated customer evaluations correspond to mall survival.
Language
English
Keywords
Perceived mall retail environment attributes
Mall survival
Multi-attribute theory
Aspect-based sentiment analysis
Customer reviews
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
102
Number
3
Start page
638
End page
658
Subject(s)
Division(s)
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
JR 2026 # Keeping the mall alive - Identifying drivers of shopping mall satisfaction and survival from customer reviews.pdf
Type
Main Article
Size
2.72 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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