We recently wrote about how the retail landscape is shifting and that even though our shopping experience mirrors the increasingly digital world we have come to live in, brick and mortar stores will never die.
While physical stores won’t become completely obsolete, new technology and the rise of e-commerce has caused some retailers, such as those selling music, to become all but extinct.
But how can it be that some stores are experiencing massive waves of store closures and others are not? The answer lies in the fact that consumers need to touch and test certain types of merchandise before buying. Shopping is a visceral experience.
So which types of stores will survive the so-called retail apocalypse?
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson created a chart which measured the rise and fall of retail employment for 19 types of vendors from the past decade – one of the best indicators of which types of retailers will continue to grow and maintain their brick and mortar locations and those that won’t.
