Sears Holdings ,Claire’s Storesand Nine West Holdings are among seven chains at high risk of defaulting within a year as shoppers shift to online merchants and spend more on experiences, according to a Fitch Ratings study of retail bankruptcies.

Sears and Claire’s are both based in Hoffman Estates.

The companies were named in a 114-page report Wednesday that found retailers wind up liquidated almost three times more often than other companies in bankruptcy because customer defections are making turnarounds harder to execute. Other chains at risk include True Religion Apparel, 99 Cents Only Stores, Nebraska Book and Rue21, Fitch said.

The credit-grading firm studied 30 recent retail bankruptcies that involved $10.5 billion of debt. Fifty percent didn’t survive the process, compared with 17 percent across other industries, Fitch said. Grocery chains were an exception, with five of six emerging

as operating businesses because they had strong locations, Fitch said.

Mall visits are “not as popular as something to do for a pastime, particularly among teens,” analyst Sharon Bonelli, one of the report’s co-authors, said in an interview. “They’d rather be on their phones and spending their disposable income on things like electronics or restaurants, coffee shops.” Most of the defaulters were companies that didn’t have a unique model, selling branded goods that shoppers can get elsewhere, Bonelli said.

In this kind of scenario, a retailer loses its “reason to exist” and its chance to regain favor with customers, and thus loses its value as a going concern to a potential savior, the report said.

The average case took 11 months to settle, based on the time from petition date to plan confirmation.