Online offerings, more than prices, put pressure on them to step up their level of service and offerings and they failed because they're not built on that model.
I've worked in corporate headquarters and it was shocking how dismal their systems were. For example, we'd ask a basic question about linked items; "Since we don't want to bother carrying product A if we also don't have product B, because most customers buy them together, can we link items in the system and flag when our in-stock rates will deviate from the ratio we want?"
We'd get blank stares at first and then after a whole bunch of meetings explaining it, you would have thought we were asking them to program a satellite launch for a Mars mission.
These companies aren't going out of business just because of an economic downturn, they're also going out of business because they were unwilling or unable to invest in serious tools and staff to support their customers. Their business model was never built on it.
Brick and Mortar stores are all going away, one by one.................