With the handicap of having so much capital tied up in bricks and mortar, management needs to make quality investments with their remaining capital.

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The experiment with e-commerce thus far has shown that online shoppers tend to favor the bricks-and-clicks models so they don't sacrifice having a physical location where they can get advice, view products or make an exchange -- a finding that bricks-and-clicks universities are likely to recognize and copy, Levine said.

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For example, they must maintain bricks-and-mortar shops, so that disgruntled staff and customers have somewhere to go to make complaints.

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