Brick-and-Mortar Decline

Retail stores should still be an option.

I think the synthesis is the hope that the market replacements for these stores is less terrible. The big displacer in the last few years has really been Amazon, who I think offers a better shopping experience than most overpriced specialty stores. Many of these stores only held firm in the market due to having an information advantage over the consumers, as well as the convenience of providing items that are similar in kind (ie toys at toys r us). The effects of a post online shopping and price

Too bad retail stores are going the way of the dodo...

What's hurting the brick and mortar store is not the "going in to compare items" part, but rather it's the "buying on Amazon instead of from the local store" part. You may as well say, "If everyone bought online instead of at the store the stores would close."

Any brick&mortar in the age of the internet cannot compete on convenience, that's inevitable; but they can compete on atmosphere, community and discovery.Bookshops have much in common with record stores, and have disappeared at a similar rate under pressure from Amazon and ebooks. The few survivors don't fight on convenience: they stock very limited catalogue, but attract patrons with events, community-building, specialist focus and so on. In some cases, what was a bookshop wit

There was an electronics retailer in my country who did this. It worked great for a few decades but online shopping killed it.A website has unlimited shelf space, physical retail doesn't. And e commerce has now been pretty much perfected with free next day delivery and internet banking.

Storefronts are becoming the discovery location, while sales shift online. In the past few months I’ve had more than one staple household purchase disappear from grocery shelves to require us to buy from Amazon. It makes sense - stores now charge something like $250k for stocking/shelf space fees. Bookstores have a different structure, but I hope to see more online warehouses show up to rival Amazon, because scalpers do enjoy hiking prices there whenever something is out of stock elsewhere.

Yeah -- It's definitely by design.It's also by design that milk and bread are in the back corners of the store.But, ecommerce makes this disdain for the shopper unsustainable. 10 years ago, if you're store sucks, you don't really have a choice. Now, if you're store sucks ... well I can buy a majority of the stuff I need through Amazon, Diapers.com, etc.So, could HelpPing be a timing play? Helping change stores right when they need to change ... so that they can survive to 2020?Thi

This is how brick and mortar stores work too; not unique to Amazon (except the dynamism of the storefront).

>> More informed purchases because people buy stuff online where it's easier to compare reviews.I was wondering about this forcing stores to provide more expertise and more flexible inventory. In my town 2 stores in a specific industry went out of business 3 years ago and made a big deal in the papers about how too many people were buying direct from manufacturers instead of visiting their store. I had been to both stores, asked some questions about products, got dumb answers and b