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Most of the major retail stores and malls in my area have shut their doors and are left as abandoned buildings. We have to go far out just to shop for clothes and food because when these places were around they killed off the small businesses. It's not just my area. Other places have become like this too. Why?
| Discount stores(Walmart/Target) | 1 | |
| Bad business practices | 0 | |
| Online shopping | 12 | |
| Other | 6 |
It's simply the emergence of ecommerce. It has nothing to do with Obama. The continued technological push has opened up room for ecommerce to take the helm of consumer spending.
In fact America is just getting around to this, other countries have operated in mostly ecommerce for quite some time.
Large corporations also wanted to cut costs as more Americans have decided to save their money instead of spending it on retail. It's simply a business move for large corporations as they die off from being too big and incapable of adapting to the changing customer demographic. Think of it as the survival of the fittest.
Supply and demand. More people have less now due to 8 years of Obama economics.
Online stores are killing the major chains, I heard a statistic a while back that there are currently 20% more brick and morter stores than the economy will support.
Walmart's even starting to feel the pressure from amazon.
Internet shopping combined with a culture that values experiences like dining or events as entertainment more than shopping. Malls took off as a concept for entertainment in the 80s-00s but that effect has worn off.
Maybe your area's local consumer economy can't support those brick and mortar stores to remain there. What has vacated the territory? Malls have been on the decline for the last decade in favor of lifestyle centers as they're known in retail. Wal Mart is a powerful entity that dominates like a monopoly pushing out local stores. Well, consumers have to stop shopping the cheapest price, and maybe pay attention to quality and a shop's local presence as a valuable necessity. You've got to decide to shop in stores you want to keep.
Like others said, e-commerce is more competitive. I can see why. I hate going to a store to find a product not in stock. I go online and viola, it's there, I can have it shipped directly to my door. The price online, even with shipping beats the local store price of a major retailer.
Now, I will say that I purposely patronize locally owned businesses over online options specifically to keep them here. I've got REI or I've got my local outdoor sporting goods shops. I go local every time and I don't bat an eye at the price.
If you don't patronize your local merchants, they can't stay in business. So shop at the local places more, shop online less and only go to Walmart when you can't find it anywhere else. Or unless you just want to look at the weird people shopping in their underwear.
Brick and motar stores are closing everywhere, most people do their shopping on Amazon. JCPenny's CEO is building a parachute to save himself from the upcoming collapse.
The huge amount of unemployed service workers won't be so lucky.
JCPenney is going to fall hard. Sears too. I was talking to friends about it an hour ago and we all seemed to agree that both those stores are always messy, outdated looking, understaffed, have ugly clothes, and they try way too hard to push credit cards. How do these stores expect to survive if they push people away?
JCPenney and Sears are being annhilated by whomever owns these retail stores. There's no investment being made in either. The brands are on their way out for that reason. What you're seeing that's messy and outdated is exactly what I mention. Zero investment.
Now, if you look at Target. That store, years ago, went through a massive rebranding and style makeover to appeal to consumers.
JCPenney has tried to do some rebranding. It hasn't panned out. I know nothing about Sears except that I have one at one of my local malls. I've been in there. It's a strange outdated store as you said. It's the crappiest dead store. If retail aesthetics make any difference, that place is awful. No matter, I can get some great jeans there, lol. I hate shopping in the store though.