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5) Strip Shopping Centers Strip shopping centers are smaller than shopping malls and are rarely enclosed. Their largest stores are discount or drug stores or supermarkets, with a few specialty stores. They are located on major roads with parking areas in front. In some suburban areas, strip shopping centers can adjoin each other making for non-stop stores for miles on end. Americans do a great deal of their average everyday shopping in strip shopping centers. 6) Category Killers The term Category Killer refers to a type of retailer or chain of stores that is so big that it kills the category for everyone else. On the Internet, both eBay and act as category killers. The?term is usually used to refer to big box stores, for example electronics giant Best Buy. The huge home and building centers?The Home Depot and Lowe’s put many small hardware stores out of business, while local toy stores have had a hard time competing with giant?Toys-R-Us. Book chains such as?Barnes and Noble and?Borders have had a similar effect on smaller bookstores. Other examples include PetSmart and Petco for pet products and Bed Bath Beyond for home products. 7) Catalogue and Internet Shopping Catalog and mail order shopping is a major component of the American consumer system. Thousands of companies put out catalogs specializing in anything you can imagine. If you subscribe to any major national magazine, your name and address will be sold to catalog houses and you’ll receive plenty of catalogs of all types. You can also request to be put on catalog mailing lists. Catalog shopping is quiet and convenient. The best catalog companies allow you to return goods you don’t like and bend over backwards to give you good customer service. With catalogs, however, you will often pay more. The products advertised in the catalogs look wonderful and are beautifully described, but in general you should only use catalogs if you simply don’t have the time and energy to touch and feel the items