But department stores, focused on America’s middle class, are fading.
The victims of shifting consumer tastes were not the department stores that anchored the local mall, it was the small, locally owned stores along downtown shopping districts that were closing their doors.
And possibly even more than the big box competitors, department stores have suffered from consumers shifting to buying items online rather than in person.
The steady closing of the department stores that once served as “anchors” of malls across suburban America has been another nail in the coffin of many malls, hurting the department stores that remained in hollowed-out malls with a fraction of their earlier traffic.
Saunders said one of the primary problem for Macy’s is that its holding company, formerly known as Federated Department Stores, spent much of its resources on buying other department store brands, such May’s Department Stores, and Filene’s, rather than investing in the stores its held.
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