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Prediction

The car becomes a shopping cart, and the mall becomes an experience and logistics hub

A 2019 future call revisited in Jim Carroll's 2026 Retail & Consumer Trends Scorecard.

The car becomes a shopping cart, and the mall becomes an experience and logistics hub
trends-scorecardreceiptretail-and-consumeroriginal-year-2019
Publish Date2026-09-18
Updated Date2026-09-18
Outcomepartial

The original call

Original year: 2019

2026 assessment

Scorecard verdict: Hit (mostly)

Hit, mostly. The big structural moves are real in 2026. “The stuff comes to us” is the dominant pattern. The car genuinely has become a shopping cart with payment built in. And the reinvention of retail real estate is exactly on script — struggling malls are being converted into experience and entertainment destinations on one hand, and into last-mile logistics hubs, fulfilment centers and “dark” distribution space on the other. The one piece running behind the paragraph is the literal “drone pads on every driveway” image — which brings us to the prediction I want to flag honestly.

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