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Southern California's Promenade Temecula mall and the Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va., both managed by Forest City Commercial Management, will use FootPath to track guests' movements beginning the day after Thanksgiving until New Year's Day. The FootPath technology system uses a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center to capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone and tracks its movement throughout the stores.

The data will be anonymous, and won't include phone numbers, demographic information or purchase details, but it will create a pool of data for mall owners to review and use in making brick-and-mortar shopping a more valuable experience.

For example, the data can help stores determine how many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks, how long most customers linger in Hollister, and isolate unpopular spots in the mall that aren't being visited.

"We won't be looking at singular shoppers," said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. "The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to."

Malls have a history of tracking how crowds move about their stores with security cameras, heat maps and even undercover researchers who follow shoppers, but this experiment marks the first time they are gathering data digitally in the U.S., prompting some privacy concerns.

However, customers at the two U.S. malls will be alerted to the program by signs hung throughout the stores, and they can opt out by turning off their phones. Still, since there is no personal data beyond the signal that is being collected, managers believe few will chose to do so. Besides, there are often incentives for shoppers to keep their phones on while they browse.

Large mall owners like London-based Hammerson, Indianapolis, Ind.-based Simon Property Group and Australia-based Westfield group have all been experimenting with digital technology to encourage shoppers to visit stores and reverse recent revenue losses.

For example, Simon Property last year used the "Shopkick" app to alert its mall visitors to retailer promotions, sales and coupons, complementing Simon's mobile shopper club. Using apps to drive sales is catching on, and Paris-based shopping center landlord Unibail-Rodamco is testing a rewards-incentive smartphone application based on visits to Amstelveen shopping center in the Netherlands.

As more large-scale mall owners catch onto the value of employing location information and the explosion of apps with consumers, more "clicks and bricks" strategy will likely take off and transform the traditional shopping experience.