ABSTRACT
The digital age has severed retail’s historic ties to geography and place. Shoppers have turned to their smart phones and computers to purchase everyday items like food and clothing as well as luxury goods and personal services. Internet commerce is now a global challenge to the so-called brick-and-mortar retailer. On both sides of the Atlantic, historic retail firms have gone under, whilst many others are struggling to compete in the new environment. By many accounts, the High Street is in crisis in the United Kingdom, indicated by declining footfall of shoppers in central business districts and by store closures. Concerns over the displacement of the High Street economy in the UK have spurred numerous studies and hopeful plans for redevelopment (Portas, 2011; Wrigley, 2015). In the United States, a country with much more retail space per person than Europe, “dead malls” have become a well-known phenomenon (Europe’s Retail Market, 2017). Although a global trend, e-commerce has diffused across national markets in varying degrees: in the United States, it hovered between 9% and 10% of total retail sales in 2017; Great Britain saw online sales hit 16.5% of total retail sales in January 2018, yet China dwarfed this, accounting for 40% of total e-commerce spending globally. Every nation has experienced growth and disruption in this sector, signalling another retail revolution is upon us (Statistical Bulletin, 2018; Quarterly Retail, 2018). While the future is not foreseeable, it is safe to say that recent trends are unprecedented in their global reach. Industry observers have described a “retail apocalypse”, seeing the end of traditional face-to-face modes of selling in a physical setting. The rise of e-commerce, which is less labour intensive by nature, has negatively affected retail employment opportunities as well. Amazon might employ more than half a million people, but these are lean numbers in relation to the firm’s value. Currently the world’s third most valuable company, its market capitalisation stands at more than $702 billion at the beginning of 2018 and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is the richest person in the world (Carr, 2018).
