> From Sears to Radio Shack
The idiotic thing is that Sears was the original Amazon, with their mail-order catalog business. It worked out well for them for a long time. But they became your grandparents' favorite place to shop (and their product offerings reflected this) within a few generations, and in their desperate bid to stay relevant they've decided to mimic the business model of Service Merchandise, which paid the price for its own irrelevance 20 years ago.
Everybody overhypes Amazon but it's not (entirely) online shopping that Sears is competing with-- it's Walmart, the neighboring, booming B&M business.
Radio Shack is not much better. "You have questions, we have blank stares" gave way to "you need solder, we have cell phones." Somewhere along the way they were forced to sell nothing but phones and lost any cachet they had as the only electronics vendor in most towns, as they were now competing with the 5 or 6 phone stores even the smallest of towns already had. I don't know where they went wrong in the first place but in this overteched age the market for consumer electronics is clearly there.
It's like watching a horror film where all you can do is scream silently "don't do that!" as the debutante goes into the basement to investigate the strange noise. Some of these pivots are just painfully short-sighted.
I suspect malls may yet make a modest recovery. More and more of them are starting to attract "lifestyle" businesses to prop them up and drive foot traffic, such as movie theaters, events, bars and (actual) restaurants.