Tinker
A friend of mine owned a reasonably-sized golf store back in the early 2000's. He'd actually worked there as a manager for several years, and when the owner expressed that he was looking to retire and leave - my friend got a business loan and assumed ownership. It was in a fairly decent high-traffic area, just in a shopping plaza off the main drag where tens of thousands of people commuted back and forth each day.
He did okay for a few years, but then two Dick's Sporting Goods stores opened shortly after that 20 minutes away. Then a few years after that a new Golf Galaxy store opened on the outskirts of town.
Between the big-box stores, not to mention this was around the same time eBay became a huge online auctioning block of used golf equipment... he simply couldn't justify the risk any longer. He was netting roughly $10/hr after paying the rent on the lease and overhead, working 60+ hours per week. He had a couple of employees who would work a couple of shifts throughout the week, but he was pretty much living at his business. He decided to pull the plug around 2006, liquidating all of his product and breaking even overall. "Best decision I ever made," he often told me afterward. "I could've made just as much money working at the local convenience store, with benefits and without the risk."
Then the bottom fell out of the economy in 2008 during the global recession. He got out just in the knick of time. The big box stores basically put him out of business. His sales dropped 35% when Dick's moved in, and dropped another 20% when the local Golf Galaxy store opened. He had no choice.
So what is happening now, if you follow the cycle over the past 15 years, is online shopping has basically done to these big box store retailers what they did to the small family-run businesses back when they took over.
I still frequent the local mom and pop retailers... I've got a local hardware store that I'm always going to first, before Lowes and all the others (unless I need lumber or big items). I've got a local appliance store where I purchase my home appliances and have been a regular customer of their's over the years, including televisions, refrigerators, washers and dryers, etc. I've got a source for furniture and area rugs, both owned locally.
Everything else (aside from groceries and what have you) I try to purchase online.
It's easier, it's usually less expensive, and I don't have to spend 2 hours of my day trying to get help figuring out what I need, only to find out that it's not what I need, only then to have to spend an hour the next day going back out to the store to fix someone's screwup. (google has helped quite a bit with this, too... don't know which fuse you need for your car? Just google it.)
It's hard for me to find any sympathy for what is happening to the big box chains these days, however. They're getting a hefty dose of the medicine they've been doling out on the local family-owned businesses for the past 15+ years.