“I think the end is in sight for brick and mortar retail stores.”
Haven’t been in a retail store, except for food/groceries, for many years. Why go?
Had been catalog shopping, and now online shopping.
Get what I want, delivered to my door, easy returns policies, for less money.
The brick & mortar Retail Store is a thing of the past.
It’s simply too expensive in today’s world of business.
Louis Rossman has been doing devastating reports from NYC on the empty buildings and the ridiculous rents.
It’s relatively the same for every business area across the country.
“Haven’t been in a retail store, except for food/groceries, for many years. Why go?”
I go to Lowe’s near me in the Spring to pick up new plants and planting soil. Some stuff it doesn’t pay to buy on line.
Commercial real estate is declining and will accelerate.
Your list is very similar to ours with some minor changes re time.
We haven’t been to a mall for well over a decade. Friends being held up in a mall parking lot in the day time stopped our mall shopping.
Even before the crud hit. We basically went to Home Depot, Costco, a local grocery store and Walmart. My wife went to Home Depot for plants, paint and stuff like that. I bought more and more from Amazon.
After the crud hit, we did Walmart pickup orders until that fell threw.
2 hour home delivery at Costco and pickup outside Home Depot after placing the order.
We gave up on Walmart due to outages/not in stock and not knowing about it until we picked up our orders.
Good local restaurants offer good takeout items at a reasonable price.
I grocery shop about 2x per week at a smaller version of a big chain with a great produce and butcher shop. If they are out of product A, I can often buy product B to replace it. This is done before I get into the checkout line.
I can compare product prices from most stores via an auto link to Amazon. Why pay more for product if I have to drive to the store to get it versus at a lower price to my front or back door?