Amazon eats E-Commerce and Retail.
E-Commerce eats Retail.
Therefore, what could Macy's possibly do to survive?
If you view it that way your answer to the Macy's question becomes very interesting!
Nobody believed the outcome until about 2004, when it actually happened.
So yes, the equations work and have practical real-world applications.
The only way to grow retail, then, is to rapidly increase customer acquisition within the retail channel. That's your only choice.
Guess what?
This starves retail, and in the long-term it starves e-commerce because retail dies too fast to feed e-commerce.
In other words, the response from "the industry" is to contract retail at the very time when you must expand retail customer acquisition.
You do the opposite of what is necessary.