"The mall may be dead (or being repurposed into an Amazon distribution center), but the strip center is alive and well. The reasons are many. Among them: open-air center rents have come down; customer acquisition costs online have gotten so expensive that physical stores are a better use of capital and … the lingering pandemic has made shoppers wary of large indoor venues."

Greg Petro, founder of First Insight, a leading “experience management (XM) platform,” writing recently on Forbes.com in the essay, “Direct-To-Consumer Brands Drive Shopping Center Boom.”