the future for retail in our town structure centres

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www.stirlingretail.comwww.stirlingretail.comwww.stirlingretail.comwww.stirlingretail.com

The Future for Retail in our Town

Centres

Professor Leigh Sparks,

Institute for Retail Studies,

University of Stirling


Structure

1. Current Retail Trends

2. Structural and Recessionary Change in Retail

3. Is there a Future for Retailing in Town

Centres?

4. Re-imagining Retail Use and Place


Current Retail Trends

• New locations and formats

• Technology

– On-line and mobile retailing

– New “shopping” models

• Role of convenience


New Locations and Formats

2


Technology: Impacts


The Online Distribution Issue

• “Dark stores”

– Urban conurbations

• Click and Collect

– Large stores

– Urban collection/delivery

– Argos and Ebay

– Transit Hubs

– On the Move?


The Blended Retail Revolution?

• Has changed:

– How we shop

– How we think about

shopping

– How we tell others

about shopping and

retailing

– How retailers sell

– Retail operations and

practices


A Different Blend? Retail Week

20/9/2013

• 40% turnover online by 2020

• Online sales up 17% in first half

2013

• 67% of JLP customers use more

than one channel

• Delivery service with Collect+ to

be launched

• 5,000 convenience stores in

under-represented countries such

as Scotland, Northern Ireland and

Wales

3


The Convenience Boom


But What is Convenience Today?


Structural Change in Retailing

• Structural Change

– Consumer behaviour

– Technology

– Business reactions


Recessionary Change and Retailing

• The Banking Crisis

• Consumer Concerns

– The Economic Downturn

and Various Measures

– Unemployment and Loss

of Disposable Income

• Zombie Companies and

Property

4


… Provides Some Opportunities


Outcome: Crisis of Retail Space

• We need less space

• We need better fit

space

– Size

– Amount

– Place


Is There a Future for Retailing in

Town Centres?

• A Town Centre Crisis not a

Retail Crisis Alone

– Decline in importance in

people’s lives

– Concentration of area

(prime zone)

– Costs have risen faster

– Rates are a big issue

– Vacancies and dereliction –

not just ex-shops and not

just street level


Modern Lives, Modern Places

“Town centres, as we currently see them, and as

most people nostalgically romanticise them, are

in the main anachronistic irrelevancies unsuited

to the changed consumer, business, social and

economic world. We do no one any favours by

clinging to an outdated vision of a past that

arguably never existed, and certainly does not

match our modern twenty-first century society.”

5


Re-imaging Retail Use and Place

• Town centres are dysfunctional; people have

reacted to this, but the system(s) have not

• Space and space use are massive wastes in the

hearts of our communities

• Cost burdens of going to, doing up and

operating in town centres are out of line

• The management of towns and town centres

has not been working for some time


The New Town Centre Retail

Narrative?

• Footfall and Spend

• Diversity

• “Leisure” – places to be,

to dwell etc

• Interest, Innovation and

Entrepreneurship

• Local


The New and Old Narratives?

• New

– Pleasure

– Attractors

– Access

– People

– Ease

– Interest

– Local

– Showrooming

– Collecting

– Quality

– Different

• Old

– Functional

– Repellers

– Barriers

– Things

– Difficulty

– Boredom

– Remote

– Selling

– Buying

– Dereliction

– Same

Every Town is Different; Some are More Different than Others, and those are the ones I want to be in


Web: www.stirlingretail.com

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 01786 467384

Twitter: sparks_stirling

Contact Points

the future for retail in our town structure centres

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