I myself do not believe, we are in a strong economy.
I think the economy is now what it has been for years, a shrinking mess.
Sure Trump is off to a good start, but I do not see things improving anytime quickly.
The last couple of monthly reports, have actually been worse than they had been before.
Trump is on the right track generally, but he is not championing American jobs yet, that I have seen.
My habits haven’t changed dramatically, but when they have changed it has been mostly down to stupid retailer tricks:
Everyone stocking the same Chinese tat.
Empty shelves.
Bait and switch.
Byzantine return policies and downright combative employees who act as if the refund is coming out of their own pocket.
A lack of cashiers and slow checkout.
Interminable and annoying sales pitches for warranties, credit cards, and so-called charities.
Appallingly inadequate product knowledge.
And then there are the properties, a magnet for feral fatherless punks.
Is Amazon convenient? Well stocked? Yes and yes but when I need an item the same day it would still be nice to have the local option.
"Store management". WTF? The whole article is about the death of retail. They are really going to re-train people to manage the stores that went out of business? What is he smoking? What stores?
"Daddy, tell me again what a "store" is! Did you really have stores when you were a kid? What was it like? Did you REALLY have to take Uber to a building where you bought stuff?"
Not sure why anyone would listen to Cohen. He sucked Sears dry, never trying to innovate anything. He sold off their organs, little by little, for artificial quarterly profits. He is an undertaker. I’m all for Capitalism, but Cohen is a human leach. He’d sell his mother.
I went to Sears to find something. It was between herramientas and plomeria.
I would think retail crashing because how PC stores have become. Look at Target. Look at any of them.
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?
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. :)
Gee, no mention of the role the increase in various minimum wages plays.
Go figure.
“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!”