Yes, specially when you have kids. And a lot kidless men and women buy shirts/suits and outfits/dresses at department stores like Macy's.

As far as I can tell, at least.

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.

Isn't Walmart basically today's version of JCPenny and Sears?

A college girl who decided I needed better clothes dragged me off to Nordstrom the other day. I can't imagine they do badly at $150 per t-shirt. We also bought a pair of $2,000 shoes at Neiman Marcus nearby for her. I guess these profit margins are what the guy was going for, but he would have been better off just dumping the old brand and building a new one, I suspect. No one goes to JC Penny for upscale clothing.

Yes. They're called women.

It is a segment that is declining overall. I think that has more to do with the legal/tax/financial framework that makes big box retail grow like a weed.

I walk by the midtown Manhattan Macy's every day on the way to work...it's not terribly tempting to go in, as all the prices are generally more expensive across the board than finding the individual brand stores online or in person. However, I am always surprised by how much stuff there is...I mean, in an existential sense. Yes, I'm always aware of the variety of consumer-targeted items through the internet, but it's something else to see it in person. Everytime I go into that midtown Macy's, I find myself just wandering all the way up to the eighth floor. Maybe that's why I don't go very often...