Online Shopping is undeniably a large part of it.
shifting demographics and niggers is a other one
people no longer having disposable income like they used to is another very big one, in the 80's, people were riding high. between the cocaine and credit cards, as well as the reagan tax cuts, people had lots of money to burn, and in general, you could still get an actual job. automation and exportation hadn't fully killed them yet.
but anothe really big one is that tastes and technology have changed. Think about this- in the 90's, lets say, you went to the mall, bought a CD or Audio Cassette, went to the video store and bought a movie, and maybe went to radioshack and perused their new fliphones, looked at the newest tv's, or a home radio set up.
that was shit that could easily be split among 4 or 5 smaller stores. Now? you get ALL of that on your phone. You go to itunes, go to netflix, and then watch live streaming tv or digital radio. So the little physical that remains is consolidated into 1 place. You go to sears or Best Buy, and they have all of that stuff in the same store. Hell, Best buy now sells home appliances too.
so the end result in general is you have way less smaller niche stores or hobby stores and shit, because it can all be consolidated into a single store, and what USED to be smaller niche stores instead are online retailers that can sell through amazon or facebook webpages.
Basically the only demographic left to sell to is women, because they still have disposable husband income.
I dont know about you guys but whenever I go to my local mall it's almost entirely women's clothing and makeup stores, jewelery stores, that sort of thing. there might be a hot topic or gamestop, but thats about it.
they're getting a bit better though, recently built a new food court and are adding a movie theater, dave and busters, and a barnes and noble. so we'll see if anything else interesting shows up.