The pandemic broke congregation. People forgot how to occupy shared space. Two years indoors rewired behaviour. Post-Pandemic Social Syndrome persists: people want to socialise but need an excuse.
Malls provide that excuse.
Agentic commerce is the tech industry’s latest pitch. AI agents know your preferences, predict your needs, purchase autonomously. No browsing. No decisions. Just algorithmic fulfilment to your door. Dystopian isolation dressed as convenience. The evangelists miss the point. People don’t want frictionless transactions. They want friction. The excuse to leave home.
The transaction is the alibi for congregation.
In the GCC this matters more. You cannot operate walk-up retail in 45-degree heat. Cities are designed for cars. Outdoor congregation is seasonal. The mall solves problems agentic commerce cannot: climate-controlled comfort, parking for thousands, places to actually go. In societies with limited common ground, the mall is where families spend afternoons and teenagers congregate.
Retail just happens to be there.
The regulatory theatre of the pandemic made this obvious. Two-metre social distancing was arbitrary. One metre in some countries, six feet in others. The virus apparently respected national measurement preferences. Malls became hostile. You couldn’t browse comfortably. The social function was eliminated. Footfall collapsed because the experience became intolerable.
Now look at the rebound. People spent two years being told proximity was dangerous. This created hunger for exactly what was forbidden: being near other people. The mall now provides what lockdown denied. Dense crowds. Casual contact. Being near strangers. People are desperate for congregation.
The two-metre rule trained behaviour that now drives people back to malls. You need an excuse to congregate. Climbing walls and aquariums provide it. The real reason is two years of isolation.
Experiential retail works because the experience is the product. The customer is there to be around other customers. Retail is background. The transaction may or may not happen. The socialisation does.
Agentic commerce solves the wrong problem. It optimises transactions while eliminating congregation. An AI agent keeps you home. It removes the excuse to browse, which removes the reason to go, which removes the opportunity to be around people. Efficient like solitary confinement is efficient.
Online shopping was supposed to kill malls. It didn’t. The format is anti-fragile because it solves problems algorithms cannot address. You cannot automate congregation. You cannot algorithm your way to social connection. You cannot deploy an AI agent to let teenagers hang out or give families somewhere to go on Saturday afternoon.
The mall isn’t competing on efficiency. It’s competing on human need.
Agentic commerce will capture convenience purchases. Toothpaste. Batteries. Restocking basics. The mall never needed that traffic. What the mall captures is everything else. Browsing. Wandering. Teenage socialising. Family outings. That small talk in your favourite café. The excuse to be somewhere other than home.
The physiology is real. Congregation reduces stress. Decreases cortisol. Increases dopamine. Triggers oxytocin. You cannot get this from an algorithm. These aren’t conveniences. These are survival mechanisms.
In the Gulf, geography makes this permanent. Climate confines outdoor congregation to winter months. Car dependence kills scattered shops. Limited common ground makes malls necessary. These are geographic facts no AI can override.
Agentic commerce will handle convenience purchases while accelerating isolation. Malls will continue providing climate-controlled space where people can simply be around other people.
The customer doesn’t want perfect algorithmic prediction. Wants to be stress free. Happy.
That’s why the mall matters.