BUFFALO, N.Y. — It's been a household name for generations, but now the Macy's you have come to know is going through a change, as 150 stores are set to close in the next three years, with 50 of them shuttering by the end of 2024.

“We've seen a lot of consolidation of these big-box stores," said Buffalo State University economics and finance professor Fred Floss. "It's really a fight among big hedge fund owners that are trying to buy up Macy's, not just for the retail portion, but also for the real estate that it owns." 

Floss has seen the ebbs and flows over the years, but boils it down to how a lot of commerce is evolving.

"What we're going to see is more and more malls close and they're then turned into mixed-use buildings with smaller boutiques, stores and apartment buildings," he added.

The hub locations you know may be going away, but much like Kmart, the e-commerce presence is still available and will be a larger focus of the changes.

"Macy's does have a delivery service that obviously could continue to,” said Floss. “Whether or not there's enough demand for the warehouses for that to happen or whether or not Amazon would win out in something like that is yet to be determined." 

So what does that really mean for the consumer? Does that really impact either our wallets or our way of life to see something like this change this drastically?

"For young people, they really don't know very much different, so it may not change their lives very much," Floss said. "But for some of us that are a little bit older, the ability to go into a store and look at the fabric, look at the kitchen utensils or whatever it is, and be able to make choices and see differences, we're no longer going to be able to do that if these stores go away."

Overall, the landscape of the standard mall and big-box stores continues to change.

"It isn't that they might not have survived and that malls might not have survived, but it was more profitable for someone else to buy them up,” said Floss. “And then they had to start this cascading. The question is, where will it end?" 

The department store made the announcement after posting a fourth quarter loss and declining sales. Meanwhile, the company says it will open smaller versions of its higher-end Bloomingdale's stores and Blue Mercury cosmetics locations.

"We are making the necessary moves to reinvigorate relationships with our customers through improved shopping experiences, relevant assortments and compelling value," CEO Tony Spring said in a statement.

Last month, Macy's said it would cut about 2,300 positions in an effort to bring down costs.