A lot has been written about the increased inflation of recent years and the causes of it.
A cause that I have not heard about is reduced competition due to the reduction in the number of retailers.
Remember when K-Mart and Sears were different chains? Then Sears bought K-Mart and has since moved on to the Shopping Mall in the Sky.
Remember Payless? All those physical stores are now selling shoes in the Shopping Mall in the Sky or the Strip Mall in the Sky.
Remember Circuit City and CompUSA? Best Buy has had fewer bricks-and-mortar competitors ever since these two store chains shut down.
There were so many more stores and chains out there when I was younger. Remember Montgomery Ward? I remember going to Venture and Zayre often during my childhood.
If you want the instant gratification of buying something at a physical store, you don’t have as many options now as you had 5, 10, 20, or 40+ years ago. Thus, these stores can charge higher prices without losing business to a nearby physical competitor. While buying online is an option not available in the 1980s and 1990s, you have to wait a few days for it to arrive. If you need it now, that’s not good enough. If you do choose the option to order online and wait, you have to pay for shipping. Any “free shipping” option isn’t really free - it ends up being built into the price of the product somehow, somewhere.