Increasing ecommerce sales online and via mobile devices is prompting B.C. retailers to shrink store sizes and rethink how to manage their brick-and-mortar store networks, according to a retail study produced by both Deloitte and the Retail Council of Canada and released May 15.
“Store sizes are shrinking and stores are being used for different things,” said Rick Kohn, who is Deloitte’s retail and consumer products leader.
“Retailers are really investing more now in technology and data. They used to run their stores by understanding their product assortments and customers in a way that was based on some traditional techniques such as surveying customers and focus groups as well as looking at what sells and what doesn’t sell.”
Some stores are converting their brick-and-mortar outlets into distribution centres because they are closer to the customer and it is a way to reduce other warehouse space, Kohn said.
The report, named Omni-channel: Rethink, Reshape, Revalue, notes that “the store is no longer just a store, but instead a space where opinions, reviews, social media, mobile, expectations, experience, technology and attitude combine to create expectations.”
Kohn believes that online transactions will never replace the brick-and-mortar store. Instead, retailers are analyzing where ecommerce orders are clustered. They then locate new stores in those neighbourhoods.
