Radio Shack tends to have old leases in 2nd tier shopping centers. Why would they buy a marginal retailer with poor footprint, when you could just lease stores yourself?
There was a time when getting space in malls and strip shopping centers was tough. This isn't one of those times.
it doesn't seem so far fetched to me; amazon being able to pick up a bunch of cheap space in fell swoop.
Now if I could return packages through Lockers, then I'd be game.
Not everyone works in an office...
Because it's already assembled, at, in theory, lower than market rates and won't take months or a year to assemble. Similar to why companies buy companies instead of building their own. At least in the area that I am in Radio Shack has decent retail locations.
The one closest to where I live is in the prime shopping center adjacent to University of Maryland.
There's seemingly enough in good locations to cherry pick them out.
http://www.radioshack.com/store-locator
(there's no permalink, but try ZIP code 10008)
There are a lot of prime locations in there. No doubt some duds too, but I expect Amazon could cherry-pick.
Putting together the real-estate inventory on your own means a lot more work.
Sell off the nonperforming locations you don't want. Keep and gut the rest. My bet is that Radio Shack as a brand is done.