Title: Why Retail Companies Are Closing Stores
Headings: Why Retail Companies Are Closing Stores
Why Retail Companies Are Closing Stores
Online Competition
The Decline of Malls
Private-Equity Debt
Quarterly Announcements

Content: That percentage has risen steadily since 2000. Amazon.com, the largest U.S. e-commerce company, had about 103 million paying subscribers to its Amazon Prime service in March 2019. That figure represents about 80 percent of U.S. households . The Decline of Malls
Another contributor to the surge in store closings is the rise and inevitable fall of largely suburban malls as a shopping destination. The number of U.S. malls grew more than twice as fast as the population from 1970 to 2015, The Atlantic reported, citing Cowen and Company research. Eventually, substantial numbers of malls were certain to fail in such an oversaturated retail environment. As some of a mall's stores begin closing—especially anchor tenants such as a Sears or Macy's—the mall loses favor with shoppers, and the declining foot traffic means more stores lose revenue, which leads to more store closures. The vacancy rate of malls in the second quarter of 2019 remained at the 9.3 percent level reported for the first quarter, according to Reis . The provider of commercial real estate data and analytics said that prior quarter's vacancy rate was the highest seen since the third quarter of 2011. The Great Recession also caused shoppers to stretch their declining or flat disposable incomes at lower-cost, big-box stores, such as Target and Walmart, that are generally not located in traditional shopping malls.