Alen Badal University of Liverpool John E. Gamble Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi The retail landscape in the United States in early 2020 may have been best characterized as rapidly changing with an uncertain future. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders by state and local governments had created unprecedented challenges for all retailers, but traditional brick-and-mortar retailers had under pressure for at least a decade. The convenience of shopping for nearly every type of consumer good at Amazon or other online retailer sites had radically transformed the retail industry. Consumer needs continued to allow for variations in strategy that allowed for distinctive retailer approaches to meeting customer expectations. But consumers had become to expect even the most highly differentiated retailers to have an online presence in addition to their prestigious brick-and-mortar locations. The change in consumer shopping preferences had especially impacted mall-based department stores. Nearly all shopping malls relied on strong department store anchor tenants to draw vast numbers of shoppers, who would also patronize smaller specialized retailers during their visits to a mall. The transition to online shopping had greatly damaged the business model of many shopping malls as smaller retailers failed along with department stores, both of whom had