[cuddlybacon]

I think that's because those items are the only ones that work to a mall's advantage.

There are four ways of providing suburban style shopping that I can think of:

* malls

* strip malls

* big-box stores

* big-box stores which oppose a strip mall

I think malls main advantage over the other archtypes is that it makes it easiest to evaluate multiple stores before committing to your choice. That is handy for clothes and gifts.

For anything else, that isn't handy. As a shopper, why then go to a mall drive to a mall, pay for parking, and then spend a few minutes navigating to get to your desired store when you could instead go to the same store in a strip mall, park for free, and enter the store in less than a minute after leaving your car?

[bobthepanda]

This is a US-only distinction.

Malls in Australia often have grocery stores and pharmacies to generate foot traffic. The mall/strip-mall distinction is purely artificial. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to distinguish CVS and Walgreens in the same mall, the same way you can make a distinction between H&M and Zara.