In the 60's and 70's I lived in a town which didn't have any department stores except "5 and dime" stores. To get really good stuff you could go into the city o

In the 60's and 70's I lived in a town which didn't have any department stores except "5 and dime" stores. To get really good stuff you could go into the city or you could go to the Sears catalog store. You could literally walk into a store and browse their catalog, order stuff from a clerk behind a counter, and wait for it to come in. There were some small items like mixers on display, but not necessarily in stock. During the holiday rush, this store would be hopping. The Sears catalog store in my town was in the same small mall (think "bigger than a strip mall") as a "5 and dime" store and a supermarket. It was not the anchor store, the supermarket was. I almost relived that last week when I bought a router from Best Buy's web site and picked it up from the nearest store. Best Buy is not the only B&M chain that has this. I could imagine that to the extent retailers survive it is in this fashion or something like it. Either about the same size as now for browsing, or smaller pick-up points. And then of course we have drones and so on. Keep in mind though, Amazon is showing us how to annihilate such a model by bringing up trust problems (see "commingling").