Retailers Scrambling To Adjust To Changing Consumer Habits (90,000 layoffs since October)

KPBS-FM ^ | May 2, 2017 | Yuki Noguchi, NPR

[huldah1776]

Correct. Retail should actually be the slowest to recover? People who have been out of work for years will know they can’t buy the crap at the mall until they pay off some of that debt. Indeed might have a job listing report.

[Organic Panic]

I would think retail crashing because how PC stores have become. Look at Target. Look at any of them.

[blueplum]

Three main reasons I won’t go to malls:

Yutes - loud, rude, disruptive
Store personnel - rude, disinterested and hard to find at times
Price missing - where is the dern price on this thing?

[2ndDivisionVet]

I knew all kinds of people like that .... in 1965.

[Miguk]

I have recently re-entered the workforce (thank God!), after being out of work for a few months.

During the interview, I was asked, "How many workdays in a month is it permissible to not show up to work?"

I had to ask for clarification, as I had never heard that question before. I said, "None." Then I asked how many prospective employees got that question wrong. He said, "More than one."

That same question was asked of me by two separate businesses that I'd applied to.

I did not think that I had been living in a bubble these last few months, but it is amazing and disappointing just how many 20 to 30-year olds have either a slipshod or no work ethic.

Not show up to a job? And think that that would be ok? And that I would still have a job?

I must be living on a different planet.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Our retail businesses are having their best year ever.

Because we don't attempt to save money by using entitled Millennials to deliver indifferent customer service. Of course people will prefer online shopping to that. :)

[Cowboy Bob]

Sure Trump is off to a good start, but I do not see things improving anytime quickly.

If I remember correctly, it took about 2 years before Reagan's tax cut got the economy moving.

Unfortunately, things take a little time. If Trump gets his tax cuts passed, I imagine the economy will be roaring by late 2018.

[who knows what evil?]

Thanks to public schools; we now have several generations of adults in the workplace who don’t know how to wipe themselves properly...I do not want to interface with these people...IF I shop; it’s online.

[Moonman62]

If I remember correctly, it took about 2 years before Reagan’s tax cut got the economy moving.

...

Volcker, the Fed chairman, caused a very bad recession in Reagan’s first term.

[mewzilla]

Gee, no mention of the role the increase in various minimum wages plays.

Go figure.

[SamAdams76]

Brick and mortar retail is dying. Nobody wants to navigate traffic clogged roads in surburbia jockeying for parking spaces only to have a miserable experience inside a mall or a big box store. As the army of delivery trucks in my neighborhood attest, everything is going online. I even get food, clothes and lawn mower parts delivered to me now. All the former impediments to shopping online are being rapidly removed. Mobile apps make it easy and fast. Same day delivery is the next big thing and eventually we will have ability to have 99 percent of anything we want delivered same day. It’s coming.

[mad_as_he$$]

“The disruption is just unfolding,” says Mark Cohen, a former CEO of Sears Canada who now directs retail studies at Columbia Business School. “I think the number of store closings will continue at an accelerated pace right through this year into next year.”

So he is one of the people that destroyed Sears through a poor understanding of the trajectory of retail? Now he is a soothsayer? Sears, “We had it all and blew it!”

[GailA]

Same here, when clothing stores sell for the under 30 skinny as a rail over 5’8” no boob women, they lost this 5’ 130 lb, 40 D, size 12, shoes went to 7’s, I wear 5.5 some 4.5. Which they say don’t exist, BS. Go to Vegas plenty of them there. Nor do I wear at 68 Street Walker ethnic crap. I buy my bras from a specialty shop, can’t get them to fit from a mall store.

I do wear church clothes, nice jeans and T’s and Clark mules I get off Amazon as they come in size 5 there. I’ve set foot in the mall 3 times in 3 yrs. Last one to look for a nice baby shower present for my coming 7th grand daughter. Over whelmed my hearing aids.

With 6 grands and 5 great grands I buy gift cards, soon to be 7 grands and 6 great grands

I boycott Macy’s, Targets, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s and many others. Any place that has up a NO GUN sign or allows men in my bathroom. They closed my fabric store, about to close Hobby Lobby too. So why drive a 2 hr round trip plus shopping time? Salvation Army provides my Jeans, T’s come from the Military base from the mark down rack, usually.