If you can wait a little, why drive to the store only to pay more for the same thing and with sales tax?

One of the reasons can be to get your goods at the place who is made to make profit selling goods, not to run in constant minus. like Amazon. Problem with biggest online US retailers is that as soon as free money float from banks and investors will stip whole construction will crash.

@jfilmmaker

Issue here is not taxes, but consumer credit. Whole system lived on consumer credit, money people never had.

Radio Shack makes me sad. They are everywhere and VERY necessary in a production pinch on the road...

Of course, every time I go into one, I end up waiting forever as someone is getting satellite tv or a new phone and service plan. Neither of which, are big profit makers for them.

Some of this can also be seen as a, playing Devil's Advocate, market correction due to over-saturation (I'm thinking specifically in this case with BestBuy). Where I live I have three, that I know of, BestBuys that I can drive to with only a couple minutes difference in time spent on the road. They're all three different sizes, with different pluses and minuses.

One of them, the Pflugerville store, I have never, even on Christmas, ever seen it busy. It's in a prime location as well with easy access from either surface streets or Austin's two major toll roads (literally at their intersection). I'd taken to calling it my "private BestBuy" because I've never had to wait in line, never felt crowded and sometimes wondered if it was even open by how few cars have historically been in the lot, during the week, on the weekend or during a holiday. It's one of the smaller stores though so their selection is sometimes lacking.

Just a couple minutes away is a Round Rock BestBuy which is always, when I've been there, at a "normal" level of foot traffic. It's also at a similarly easy to find, easy access location but bigger. Consequently it's also dirtier, more crowded and more everything else you'd come to expect from a busy retailer.

Book stores have been getting the shit kicked out of them by online since the invention of Amazon. Harder economic times only magnify the impact of online sales. They've been dying a slow death like BlockBuster but the poison was administered a long time ago. The arbitrary fluctuation of the market and economy, which is based on perception and not reality, only serves to hasten their demise or return it to its normal rate of decay but it's sorta just a matter of waiting for the final flat line now :(

Similarly, I can think of three GameStops, at least, all within minutes of each other. At some point you have to kind of wonder if, at the time each franchise was set up, was one more, this close to another, really needed? Is living in a never-ending web of strip malls indicative of a healthy economy (not to mention, culture)?

Service economies come with a sell-by-date.

I don't want anyone to lose their job or have a harder time. But retail is living the life of a pawn, the piece on the board with the least amount of security.

edit: I don't understand how people think the retail sector, houses, etc. can just keep expanding and expanding indefinitely. The houses in LA are a prime example. At a certain point people are realizing they're being asked to pay a million dollars for an absolute piece of crap. They all pretended like there was no place to go but up but, really, we would need an endless supply of stupid millionaires content to live in houses and neighborhoods other parts of the country might consider "the ghetto."

Looks like a lot of people are going to be jobless. We are on the road to hell.