I don't think these franchise situations are really too relevant...

I don't think these franchise situations are really too relevant to SGP. I've been hearing horror stories about franchises for years, and it's because the franchise corp have the individual franchisees over a barrel. They force them to buy stock from the main corporation at inflated prices and give up a % of their revenue. Even if the stores are losing money the corp side still profits, and if the business model isn't working any more, the individual owners have very little they can do about it as they're locked in to selling a certain product prepared in a certain way using materials/ingredients sourced from a certain supplier at a certain cost, with a certain amount of advertising and promotions provided by the franchise corp. No one HAS to deal with SGP or westfield.

My observation over the past few years is that 'traditional' retail areas along streets and behind office blocks are completely dying or already dead. Malls are dominating and if you want to open a retail store, you're just going to have to run the math and decide whether your offering is capable of generating enough income to cover the rent. Option B is opening a store in a 'traditional' retail space where you will get a fraction of the customers and sales unless you have a business that doesn't rely on foot traffic. Any premium non-mall retail space that still gets significant foot traffic is going to charge rent that is similar to the malls anyway.

If the rent being charged by shopping malls was unsustainable and shopping centres were destined to turn in to ghost towns, we wouldn't have 99% tenancy rates. For as long as there are teenagers willing to pay $200 for a pair of shoes that you can buy online for $50 while sipping on a smoothie that cost them $7.50 that contains $0.40 of ingredients and took 30 seconds to make, then the malls are going to continue to do just fine, and so are their tenants.