MallStreams and Attribution Case Study: Tale of Two Malls

Summary: Explore an example of how MallStreams data can measure change in visitation for two comparable properties, Macerich’s and Westfield’s .

Introduction: Both properties are enclosed malls competing for the same customers within two miles of each other in , CA. While the Westside Pavilion has remained relatively unchanged over the years, Westfield recently invested $1 billion in Century City to bring on several high profile tenants, including Eataly, , and Macy’s. The following summary showcases how Thasos data products can help assess the return on Westfield’s investment and the corresponding impact on competitors.

Key questions for investors: What is the lift in customer footfall to Century City? Once the novelty factor wears off, is the steady state footfall sufficient to support the new tenants? Is the demographic composition of the new and existing customers appropriate for the newly offered products and services?

Results: The plot below illustrates that the year-over-year (YoY) change in customer visitation to Century City peaked at +60% approximately 3 months after Eataly opened for business, and leveled off at around +30%. Meanwhile, at Westside Pavilion, the YoY change in customer visitation has fallen nearly 40% as of mid-April and continues to decline. In terms of demographics, mean household income of visitors to Westside Pavilion has begun to decline significantly while the same metric for Century City has not changed meaningfully in response to the new tenants.

Footfall Change and Income Demographics Over Time

MallStreams and Attribution products enable clients to rapidly answer a wide range of key questions and monitor fundamental trends in real-time. With live coverage of over 4,000 individual malls and historical data beginning in 2015, these products have documented the impact of many redevelopments, tenant turnovers, consumer trends, and other events, providing a rich history of observations for predictive analytics. From equity and credit investors to retailers and property owners, the MallStreams and Attribution products have enhanced decision making processes by setting a new standard for information transparency.