Basically, yes. Some combination of Walmart, Target, Costco, and Amazon (and I'm sure others that I'm leaving out) have basically taken over the inexpensive dep

Basically, yes. Some combination of Walmart, Target, Costco, and Amazon (and I'm sure others that I'm leaving out) have basically taken over the inexpensive department store market, where price is the #1 purchase-decision factor. At some point, you end up in a logistics competition, where your margin is dependent on whether your supply chain is cheaper than someone else's. Within tech, the demise of Dell illustrates the perils of being a commodity supplier. There's plenty of profit to be had in the higher end, selling "the experience". Nordstrom, for instance, is doing just fine. Being able to walk into a store, talk with knowledgable salespeople who can get a feel for your style and desires, then recommend products that suit them is a value that some customers are willing to pay for. Johnson's background with Apple was in creating the latter sort of experience, but it simply did not match with the priorities of the JCP customer, and was driven by the notion of "build a better store, and the customers will come", without enough research into where potential gains and losses were.