Bloomberg Business Week

"The Future Retail Wasteland" - Brad Stone and David Welch, with Jim Aley

We all saw it coming.  As the Internet made our now everyday products available online via Amazon and Ebay, the once popular mega stores, like Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, began their decent to the retail wasteland.  

This essay uses the rise and fall of previous chief executive officer Brian Dunn's career with Best Buy to illustrate the inevitable change in sales for the company.  What was once the key selling point for Best Buy, as Dunn enthusiastically explains, has now become it's central reason for decline: choice.  "Shoppers are finding more choices online - primarily at Amazon.com - where they can often find a better deal. At the same time choice has narrowed in product categories such as HDTV's and PCs.  There's hardly a reason anymore to line up various models in a showroom."  We all remember the days when we would physically have to go to these mega stores in order to compare the differences in products due to the variety that was available.  We also remember the issues that came with going to these stores, essentially that the sales clerks never knew the facts about the products, and that the whole ritual of buying was more like a game of Russian roulette.  Now however, in our tech savy society,  the standards of products have gone to whatever is up to date and mainstream, thus making them essential.  Instead of having to peruse through stores, we can view our desired products online in the comfort of our homes.  Instead of having to deal with unknowledgable sales clerks, now we can find all the information we need on product pages, which are conveniently accompanied by personal comments and ratings from other buyers so the risk of a bad purchase on our part is almost obsolete.  And then, if we would still prefer to purchase at a store instead of online, popular brands like Apple and HP have opened their own smaller stores focusing only on their products, thus giving us a reliable location to go to for purchase, instruction,  and repair if need be.

So what are these once mega stores doing to compensate for the market changes?  In order to compete, these stores have opened up to the online market and are now working to downgrade their physical stores to focus on whatever is keeping that particular retailer afloat. Walmart, for example, has been closing several of it's once heralded mega stores and traded them for smaller stores focusing mainly on grocery products.  

Our choices have lead to the fall of these retailers.  If we continue on our current heading, will these stores eventually become ghosts in our towns?  Or is it possible that we will leave the digital market and see the resurrection of these previous icons?  Honestly I don't see the latter happening.  As much as I might dislike it, we are on our way to becoming a digital world.  If these stores plan on surviving, they need to adapt quickly and try to get ahead of the market, or I am sure they will become only entries in our digital archives.