The retail sector has not yet reached a unified stance on the impact of e-commerce, it emerged at the last edition of the Mapic real estate fair in Cannes last week. 'Retailers and developers seem to be divided on their approach to online shopping,' commented François Ortalo-Magné, Director of Wisconsin School of Business Global Real Estate. 'Everyone knows that online will have a role to play in the retail process but there seems to be no real agreement on what role and what strategy to invent,' he noted.
The retail sector has not yet reached a unified stance on the impact of e-commerce, it emerged at the last edition of the Mapic real estate fair in Cannes last week. 'Retailers and developers seem to be divided on their approach to online shopping,' commented François Ortalo-Magné, Director of Wisconsin School of Business Global Real Estate. 'Everyone knows that online will have a role to play in the retail process but there seems to be no real agreement on what role and what strategy to invent,' he noted.
Ortalo-Magné made the comments following three days of independent delegate surveys in Cannes by Wisconsin School of Business researchers. 'There are those companies like SFR who are radically re-educating their store staff so that they have the same level of product knowledge as the clients who come to the shop having surfed the web to find about products. There are those companies who see their flagship stores as communication tools. And there are those companies who haven’t yet decided what to do,' he added.
Commenting on whether internet posed a threat to the retail real estate industry, Carrefour Property CEO Pascal Duhamel told Mapic delegates, 'From a real estate perspective I don’t think it’s a threat at all.'
Ebay estimates that e-commerce currently accounts for 5-6% of the retail market, but expects this figure to grow to 15% in due course. In 2009, the company achieved $57 bn retail sales globally.
In France, the first quarter of 2010 saw over 25 million French cyber-buyers looking for web-based bargains to help overcome their purchasing power problems. Research on the French retail market, released by Jones Lang LaSalle to coincide with Mapic, put the value of web-shopping in France at EUR 25 bn in 2009.
Meanwhile research undertaken in Germany estimates that ecommerce has taken away 14% of traditional high street sales, but shows that 11% of offline sales are generated on-line, bringing the net effect to just a 3% reduction in traditional high street sales.
Outlet centres also face growing competition from e-commerce. Click the link below to read the rest of the article.
