This seems to be a trend recently where people are posting really early photos of their malls during Boxing Day today and how empty it is to show signs that people just don’t have the money to spend. While that may be true in a lot of cases, when I went to the malls during the mid day everything seemed pretty busy. Stores had lineups and vendors were busy with all the extra traffic. While it doesn’t seem as crazy as a few years ago, one big factor for the crowds is that people are simply buying online. I did as an example and going to the stores was more to see what it is like and maybe there would be a good random deal.
It can be a cautionary tale of statistics in general as taking the survey in a different time of the day could completely distort the narrative of another report. Imagine you as a business relying on a report to list the best place to setup a shop and you read that initially on how the area is dead. Access to information is easier nowadays, but you should still try and do your own due diligence as well. At minimum, compare different reports to see if there is conflicting information that needs investigating.
In general, I did not buy anything from the stores though personally as online had the deals I needed already from those same stores I would have shopped at in-person.