Market Movement  /  The Numbers

The industry's own trade body already calls these spaces the "third place" — and the economy's heartbeat.

We didn't invent the thesis. The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) has spent years documenting exactly the behavior 5th Wall is built to capture: people gather first, and buy second — and the physical floor is still where value is made. Here is the market, in its own figures.

116,214
shopping centers across the U.S.
1.3B
visits every month
$3.1T
U.S. retail real estate value
86.7%
of retail sales still in physical stores
I

The "third place" is already how people behave

ICSC's own language: shopping centers are the "third place" — where people go to be with others when they're not at work or home. Consumers don't want a shelf. They want a reason to gather, and increasingly they say so out loud.

70%
of consumers say malls should combine shopping with entertainment, services and experiences — not just retail.
1.3B
visits per month — the average U.S. adult enters a center 5.2 times a month.
76%
say a good mix of retail and services increases the vibrancy of their local community.
63%
view malls as valuable assets to their community.
45%
say non-retail tenants make them stay longer; 38% say they visit more often.
181M+
people visited a mall over one holiday season — of them, 42% dined and 27% saw a movie, not only shopped.
What this means for 5th Wall

The demand for a gathering-first place is already proven and already unmet. Atmosphere™ doesn't have to teach people a new behavior — it has to monetize the one they already have: meet, share, learn, then transact.

II

Foot traffic is the economy's heartbeat

ICSC frames retail real estate as the "perpetual heartbeat" connecting Main Street to Wall Street. The scale is not a niche — it is civic infrastructure that funds schools, roads and fire departments, and it runs on human presence.

$5.7T
retail real estate sales in a single year — roughly 29% of U.S. GDP.
1 in 6
U.S. jobs sit in retail real estate — 34.8 million people.
$3.1T
total value of U.S. retail real estate.
$390.6B
contributed annually in property and sales taxes that fund municipal infrastructure.
+67
additional community jobs supported for every 100 direct jobs (the multiplier effect).
48.4%
of these jobs are non-retail — health, fitness, education, professional services.
96%
of U.S. adults shop the small businesses located in their town's centers.
What this means for 5th Wall

If presence already powers a $5.7T engine, the opening isn't creating demand — it's capturing the value that presence generates in real time, instead of waiting to collect it as rent. That is the entire premise of PEIT™.

III

Physical and digital are one motion, not two

ICSC is blunt about it: bricks and clicks are "not an either-or, they are a relationship." The store is where research becomes purchase — the exact convergence a phygital floor is built to orchestrate.

3.5×
Omnichannel shoppers spend more than single-channel shoppers.
86.7%
of retail sales still happen inside a physical store.
4×
higher conversion in-store than online — 25–45% vs. just 2–5%.
71%
of shoppers research online before buying in-store.
68%
use a mobile device while shopping in-store.
90%
of click-and-collect shoppers make an additional purchase when picking up in-store.
60%
buy in-store specifically to see, touch and try — the one thing the cloud can't ship.
What this means for 5th Wall

The market already runs on the seam between digital demand and physical presence — it just isn't instrumented. OffNdOn™, PingPod™ and the live floor turn that seam into measurable, recurring revenue.

Every number above describes a behavior the market already has. 5th Wall is simply the infrastructure that finally reads it, routes it, and monetizes it — buyers and sellers, in the same living room.

Figures are published by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) in its Master Narrative & Supporting Points and the underlying ICSC consumer, economic-impact and fact-sheet sources (primarily 2017–2018, U.S. unless otherwise noted), with select data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bain & Company and L2. They are presented here as independent industry context to illustrate market behavior — not as forecasts of 5th Wall PE performance. 5th Wall PE / Value Masters Group is not affiliated with or endorsed by ICSC.