Retailers(零售商) closed more than 9,000stores in 2019. Some people call what has happened to the shopping landscape "the retail1" It is easy to chalk it up to the rise of e-commerce, which has thrived while physical stores struggle. But this can be2. Online sales have grown tremendously in the last 20 years, but Internet shopping still represents only 11 percent of the entire retail sales total. Collectively, three major3forces have had an even bigger impact on brick-and-mortar retail than the Internet has.
To begin with, we have changed4we shop — away from smaller stores like those in malls and toward stand-alone “Big Box” stores, which is a greater problem for most physical stores.
Also, Rising income5has left less of the nation's money in the hands of the middle class, and the traditional retail stores that6them have suffered. It is estimates that since 1970, the share of the nation's income earned by families in the middle class has fallen from almost two-thirds to around 40 percent. As the7of income at the top rises, overall retail suffers simply because high-income people save a much larger share of their money. The government reports8for different income levels in the official Consumer Expenditure Survey. In the latest data, people in the top 10 percent of income9almost a third of their income after taxes. People in the middle of the income distribution spent 100 percent of their income.10, as the middle class has been squeezed and more has gone to the top, it has meant higher saving rates overall.
Lastly, We have spent11less of income on things and more on services. Since 1960, we went from spending 5 percent of our income on health to almost 18 percent, government statistics show. We spend more on education, entertainment, business services and all sorts of other products that aren't12in traditional retail stores. Economists debate theories of why we have 13to services and away from goods but no one questions that it has happened. It means that over time, retailers selling14will have to run harder and harder just to stay in place.
In short, the broad forces hitting retail are more a lesson in economics than in the power of15. It's a lesson all retailers will have to learn someday.
