Retail parks – going going gone
Over the past couple of months I have been looking into the future of retail (findings to be published soon …) and in my analysis I could not find a place for the retail park, at least in Europe.
Now that so many retail park companies have gone bust it all seems so obvious.
Why drive somewhere simply because the goods cost less? an Internet company will always be able to undercut a retail park company.
And if its not cost that is pulling in the people then it must be the brand experience or uniqueness that draws them possibly to make their actual purchase online afterwards.
The highstreet with its character history, mass transit systems and large number of small retailers will always have more pulling power.
4 Responses to “Retail parks – going going gone”
simon
comment from facebook
not sure I agree, one of the retail parks stalwarts is the furnature
shop, it’s gonna take a lot to convince people to buy a sofa they have
never seen in the flesh or indeed sat on. Clothes might be easy enough
to return but sofas are a different matter, the retail park still
offers the consumer something the internet cannot.
Dont get me wrong… Read more,
there is no room for electrical shops and their ilk and frankly i hate
retail parks more than most, but certain products demand to be
experianced face to face.
simon
I completly aggree with you that people want to get up close and personal with some products that they buy.
And the internet is a pants way to choose a sofa.
However its a great way to buy a sofa.
I am suggesting here that retailers will use the town center shopping areas again to set up places where people can go and choose (or to use wanky words “have a brand experience”).
The act of buying then happen in the town center or can happen later when the consumer gets home.
Which every way the “out of town cow shed” style of shop has little to draw people in, especially when travel costs will increase green agenda.
Gianni
The internet flourishes on two key areas of the retail triangle, it is conveniant in so much as you needn’t leave home, and it is cheap because they can reduce overheads, by not having expensive shops in desirable locations… you can see where I’m going here.
If you have to go and ‘experiance’ the goods anyway the eshop has no benifit, and if they have a flashy town centre showroom they increase their overheads and lose custom to the price savvy. The reality will be much as we already see, out of town centers will become product polarised with the outlets there sharing carparking space with their direct competators. all the furnature stores in one place, and the shoe shops in another, we will go back to the middle ages where all peddlers would group together in open competition so the customer would know where to find them… I agree that the sites will get fewer, but they will also grow bigger.
simon
I guess blue water is the kind of thing your talking about here.
I was thinking about it from a marketing angle. You have to get your potential customers to know about your products, which for a whole range of things means they have to come round and play with them (for example a sofa).
Its difficult to make a call as to which way the future will go, but one thing is for sure, nobody will be arsed to go some where to buy a product that is the same every where and they dont interact with it in a personal way e.g. a can of beans or a mobile phone.
Hmmmmmm
I wonder what else you could do with a retail park?
maybe you could make it a family entertainment place
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