It is very simple: Big stores have a huge cost advantage over independent stores. They have fewer employees relative to their sales volume than do the small stores. Meanwhile, they buy in volume and don't bother stocking items that have a small sales volume, which gives them a very high profit margin. It is not possible for smaller stores to compete on price; they can only compete on service.
The Ace Hardware stores seem to be bucking the trend. Although the stores are independently owned, they seem to follow a common formula: Good service and a good inventory of items the big box stores don't bother with (e.g. oddball fasteners).
As for restaurants, the chains are successful because we are creatures of habit. You can go into a McDonalds or Cracker Barrel anywhere in the country and you won't be faced with anything unfamiliar. (Which is not to say the food at chain restaurants is fit to eat, only that it is consistent.) For the most part, my wife and I avoid the chains when traveling; as a result we have had both very bad and very good meals on our trips.
Online shopping is no doubt affecting the mall stores, but they are being squeezed from other directions as well: They pay astronomical rent, while their target customers (middle-class urbanites in their twenties) are not making the kind of money they made twenty years ago.
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Today's Featured Article - A Lifetime of Farm Machinery - by Joe Michaels. I am a mechanical engineer by profession, specializing in powerplant work. I worked as a machinist and engine erector, with time spent overseas. I have always had a love for machinery, and an appreciation for farming and farm machinery. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Not a place one would associate with farms or farm machinery. I credit my parents for instilling a lot of good values, a respect for learning, a knowledge of various skills and a little knowledge of farming in me, amo
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