Interesting discussion (even though off topic)... I think the real problem is in the smaller countries. In the US, you have a huge economy and a single market. No translation work to be done for manuals and so on. Even though the 10-15% off at online stores will cost many local dealers sales, they will still find enough customers in most cases I think. But here in Finland for example, the situation is really different: it´s not just the 10, or even 20% more you pay at local stores, it´s sometimes closer to 100% (no joke). For example I can get the AKG K701 at 60% off at Thomann.de compared to local prices. With exotic gear like Stax the situation is a complete joke: now you pay around 50% more compared to importing, but it used to be more than 100% just a year ago - the distributor had to make some changes it seems.
Luckily locally made (and Scandinavian stuff in general) gear is still very nicely priced in stores (better than online even!), stuff like Genelec, Amphion and Gradient, but for most products the situation is really grim. And I have to admit, I´m not all that impressed by the local customer service either (some exceptions though). Most of the time the average forum reading enthusiast knows way more about the products than the dealer. Actually to be completely honest,the best service I´ve had has been from online stores (just just talking delivery speed etc; I mean product support, information etc) so it´s getting harder and harder to support the local hifi shops here. Combine that with high taxes (meaning people have less money to spend on hobbies), I don´t see much of a future for most local hifi shops. I think the situation in the US is actually still pretty good for the small shops.