I can see the truth of what you're saying here about the US. I'm interested regarding Australia also, as I went to one outlet mall in Melbourne on holiday. I only bought one pair of shoes, later saw them for the same price I had paid on Styletread online. So not sure that the price I paid was at all discounted. Was still happy with it/them.
In NZ, we have very few outlet malls, only aware of 1 in Auckland, a city of 1 million people or so. The outlet STORES near me are quite genuine as they are the head offices of those brands and I see the regular priced stuff in retail stores nearby. I'm just really lucky I live within about 2 kilometres of 3 major fashion brands' head offices.
Do any of the U.K. YLF readers know about places like Bicester Village, if the discounts are genuine? I've shopped there a few times on holiday as my only sister lives near Oxford. I was quite pleased with what we got there- Levis, Clark's shoes, Monsoon... But maybe we were tricked!