Will the internet bring about the death of retail?

Do you spend more time shopping online or browsing items at a store? If you are like many people, you are doing an increasing amount of online shopping. That has many retailers sending out an SOS call for rescue, but some in the industry say the lifeboat is already gone.

Recent economic numbers show mall based and brick and mortar operations are sagging under debt, dwindling foot traffic, and distressed credit ratings.  In addition to the recent financial reports coming from Sears, some are calling this the worst news since the Great Recession.

Leon Wolf, Managing Editor of TheBlaze joins Sara Gonzales, filling in for Dana Loesch, to discuss whether any box retailer can survive the internet or if we are simply headed toward a world without malls.

"It's a very difficult question to answer, and certainly I think that the internet is posing an existential threat at the very least to the mall existence. I do think that some of the smaller brick and mortar retailers that are specialty stores can survive the incursion," Wolf said. Leon went on to question whether smaller stores inside malls would be able to survive if the larger department stores did not based on the expense of real estate alone.

"This is going to physically change the future of suburbia, of the suburban mall. If those things go away, any suburban area you go to that has a major mall, there's kind of a whole retail area that's cropped up surrounding the mall... a lot of other things that are also going to be affected by the loss of those tenants as well," Wolf pointed out.

To see more from Dana, visit her channel on TheBlaze and watch full episodes of “Dana” live weekdays 6–7pm ET or anytime on-demand at TheBlaze TV.