I generally try to support brick & mortar stores over ordering stuff online, especially from Amazon. However, my story speaks to the heart of how/why retail is changing so rapidly.
I have COPD and need a specific product. As a Teacher, I am constantly speaking and need to continually pop sugar free menthol cough drops to keep my chronic cough under control throughout the day. I discovered Walgreen's brand "sugar free menthol" cough drops, 150 count in a convenient blue, zipper bag. I depend upon this product daily. (They make great little breath mints also, as a student once said to me, "All my teachers have bad breath, but your breath is always nice!")
My local Walgreen's is just down the street, so I'd happily walk straight to the cold/flu isle, grab a bag of Walgreen's "sugar free menthol" cough drops, and maybe a few other items on impulse. I'd even build store credit on my Walgreen's account for discounts. Then about three months ago, I marched into my neighborhood Walgreen's with a smile and arrived at the cough drop section. No bags of Walgreen's "sugar free menthol" cough drops. No worries, another Walgreen's was only one-mile away. I found them there. Next month, product not there, but grabbed the last bag on an end cap, at the third Walgreen's I had to visit that day to find this product. The final straw was last month when I drove to four different Walgreen's in Portland to find Walgreen's brand "sugar free menthol" cough drops- but not one store had them available to purchase. I depend upon this product. (I found lots of Honey flavored sugar free, but not the blue Walgreen's sugar free menthol brand, and I can't continually pop regular menthol cough drops filled with sugar.)
Sad, and feeling a bit guilty about it, I drove home and opened Amazon. I discovered the same product (150 sugar free menthol cough drops) was available in a different bag, for $1 less. I order them on Amazon to a pickup locker just two blocks away because of porch pirates in Portland. They arrived the same day, and I now have the product I need, conveniently, whenever I want/need it. It's actually more convenient, as I park three feet from the Amazon locker, and don't even have to walk into/through a Walgreen's store and wait at the checkout stand.
I now have no reason nor motivation whatsoever to step foot in a Walgreen's store ever again, all because they can't meet the demand and keep a product I need stocked, at any Walgreen's in my area. If the demand for this product is so high, why didn't they order an entire semi-truck of these, and even build a shed out back to store them? Do Walgreen's managers not own computers nor understand how to program 'auto-order' for products that continually run out of stock? It seems someone in the Walgreen's Corporation would even notice that a savvy entrepreneur could open a "Sugar Free Menthol Cough Drop" stand in the parking lot, and make a $million on a product with such high demand. It's baffling to me.
Again, sadly, I thought this was a perfect illustration of why brick and mortar stores are failing and why we will all be forced to order products we need online from the great satan of our era. The times they are a changin'. And old giant brand stores like Walgreen's just can't adapt to the changes.
So, good bye forever, Walgreen's. You were once a great, proud, leader of retail healthcare products. Maybe invest in better computers or something to stay that way. Or just do it like shop owners did in the olden days, and notice: "Wow customers are sure buying a lot of these!" (And keep those items in stock.) It might work for ya.