The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Retail in City Centres

Abstract

Over the past few decades, city centres and their retail spaces have undergone significant changes and have struggled to remain economically viable. The COVID-19 pandemic and the public health response to the crisis have exacerbated this situation and posed a serious challenge to the already economically struggling city centres. Recommendations for how city centres should respond to the current crisis are urgently needed, but despite this, few studies have focused on the impact of COVID-19 on retailing in city centres. This paper conducts a systematic review to provide a better understanding of how retail in city centres has been affected by the pandemic. It also offers insights to support better decision making about the future of retailing in city centres and provides recommendations for ensuring a sustainable future for city centres. The review, conducted between the 20th of November 2021 and the 20th of January 2022, shows that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health response have intensified some considerable changes in customer preferences and the role of city centres. As a result of these changes, more retailers have adopted multichannel retailing and repositioning strategies. This paper concludes that in order to create vibrant and sustainable city centres post-pandemic, decision makers should support the repurposing of vacant and underperforming retail spaces, promote an experience economy, and create episodic retail spaces.

Resilience of Smart Cities to the Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Context of Sustainable Development

“…Considerable attention is paid to the study of the economic consequences of COVID-19 and its impact on the economic sectors, especially those most affected by the pandemic. Thus, a significant number of scientific works are devoted to the impact of the COVID-19 on the transport industry, and in particular, public transport [36][37][38][39], retail trade and services in general [40], etc.…”

Pandemic-driven consumer behaviour: A foraging exploration

“…For example, consumers moved away from larger supermarkets to shop in smaller, local convenience stores. Some consumers moved away from physical stores altogether, favouring online retailers, and were more demanding of store cleanliness and size to enable social distancing (Gordon-Wilson, 2021; Lashgari and Shahab, 2022; Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020).…”

How consumer behaviours changed in response to COVID-19 lockdown stringency measures: A case study of Walmart

“…The implementation of lockdown or social distancing measures, coupled with changing work-life patterns, exposed the fragility of traditional retail centres (Cilliers et al, 2021) and global supply chains ( Sharma et al, 2021 ). High retail unit vacancy rates and significant reductions in footfall were two of the key issues that many cities around the world were faced with ( Lashgari & Shahab, 2022 ). In an attempt to stabilise the retail economy and keep businesses afloat, governments brought in a number of economic measures.…”

“…personal risk appraisals) ( Wang et al, 2022 ). In many places, consumers altered the location of where they chose to shop, tending to avoid larger retailers and crowded high street centres ( Lashgari & Shahab, 2022 ) in favour of smaller stores ( Li et al, 2020 ), local retail centres ( Ballantyne et al, 2022 ) and out-of-town based shopping alternatives ( Sundström et al, 2021 ). A study using mobile phone records for retail foot traffic in busy commuter zones in the US found a significant fall in consumer traffic even before legal restrictions were enacted ( Goolsbee & Syverson, 2021 ).…”