1. Be all over the town, and rely on marketing to get people to come to your shop and not the others.
2. Be all in the same street, get more walk in customers, and rely on good salespeople and good deals to get the sales.
I'm guessing that they've found 2 to work better than 1. Also means they can take advantage of each others marketing.
Also I expect once a street becomes 'known' for something, it'd be silly to set up a shop anywhere else for that thing. For example Tottenham Court Road is where you go for Computing/tech shops in London, so that's where most people go if they want tech.
> Does this explain the disproportionate prestige of .com?
It's part of it. Here's a few other reasons:
1. It's a quality indicator: It means it's more likely that the company has been around a long time and that it's not a scam.
2. People's default surfing habits had them looking for the .com. I had a .net domain for a company I ran and we bought the .com for $3000 after a number of clients told us they forgot our site, and worse - sent emails to the .com address that we never got.
3. This is a more recent development, but with the iPhone having a ".com" button on the keyboard, that makes it even more advantageous going forwards.
