A few days back, someone here was asking about how are Mom & Pop's stores going down in the current economy.

Giving it a thought, I kinda got this idea. And I would like to share it to other people here with more knowledge on the subject about these topics.

Basically, my interpretation is that the small, family-owned stores have been hit bad with the creation and spread of Megamarts and Shopping Malls. Or Mass Local Markets.

The competition conditions are beyond unfair. Some, claims indicates that certain Megamart chains can work with loses for a long time in order to kill off the competition. Namely, local, small businesses.

While the Shopping Mall kinda offers a good option for people: everything at a single place. Including entertainment. With better environmental conditions, such as not having to worry about weather.

These are kind of my evidence. But, also, we count in the Internet.

I kinda noticed many businesses which were more "regional-based" have turned to the Internet, and gained not only Regional rech, but also National-wide. Some even went Global.

However, shopping malls can't do that. Even if they help kick out small businesses out of town, they still rely on their regional reach.

Then Amazon and Ebay comes into play. This is were I think the game rules took a 180°.

Amazon uses the Internet to go around a limitation of the Shopping Malls and the Megamarts: physical infrastructure.

Sure, Amazon has storehouses. But these "Fullfilment Centers" ain't shopping malls. You can't go up there and order something of the website and pick it up as a Drive-In. As far as I know.

Also, Amazon doesn't rely on "rent" to keep retailers within it "boundaries". They just charge a fee off the price of the products retailers, which I understand is paid directly to Amazon by their website customers on each transaction. Saving the costs of rent the Shopping Malls rely on.

In a way, a small store in the middle of Nowhere, can just go ahead and continue servicing customers all over the country. Without having to engage directly the administration in Social Media and Site Administration services.

So, my point: Internet came in to give a second breather to small businesses. As well as small companies gaining independence from the Mass Local Markets. In turn, Mass Local Markets lost part of their reach because of that.