The Latest from the US on E-commerce effect on ‘Bricks and Mortar’ Shopping Centres

South African commercial property trends may differ in some respects to the US, but we still take many cues from that influential country and South African trends are certainly affected by American ebbs and flows. No less so in the realm of e-commerce shopping’s influence on how we build our retail centres.

It’s undeniable, for some time online shopping has had both a complimentary and supplementary influence on the retail industry. E-commerce has altered how consumers shop and retailers do business. The knock-on effect has been an influence on how stores are designed and a long term transformation of how retails centres are built.

But what about right now, do shopping trends confirm or deny the shift, what could be coming our way here in South Africa? Well if the 2012’s holiday shopping is anything to go by; it’s more of the same. Abigail Rosenbaum, senior economist for CBRE reports that online sales are on track to outperform brick-and-mortar holiday sales for the fourth year in a row.

Rosenbaum reports that “Taking core retail sales (total sales, ex auto and ex gas) as a gauge for brick-and-mortar sales, a performance comparison against online retailers shows e-commerce’s impact to be undeniable.” It seems that consumers are ‘choosing sides’ if you will. Outside of a two-quarter span during the recession, e-commerce sales growth has consistently beaten core sales. And the momentum seems to be in e-commerce’ favour. As of the last data point (Q3), growth was 17.3%—its best rate since 2011Q1. Core retail sales growth, on the other hand, has decelerated to around 4%, its lowest rate in several quarters.

According to ICSC, sales growth among chain stores went into the red in November (down 0.1% compared to one year ago). According to ShopperTrak, sales at brick and mortar stores decreased by 1.8% on the day after Thanksgiving (a high watermark for US shopping). However, IBM saw online sales on that same day increase by 20.7%, which seems to indicate that consumers favoured shopping online on the day after Thanksgiving.

NRF’s Stores Magazine, consumers’ 10 favourite online retailers are 1. Amazon.com, 2.Walmart.com, 3.eBay.com, 4.BestBuy.com, 5.Kohls.com, 6.JCPenney.com, 7.Target.com, 8. Macys.com, 9.Sears.com, 10.Google.com.

So, you may ask, how is this strong e-commerce performance translating into changes at retail centres—specifically with regard to their development?  As Rosenbaum has looked at the pipeline of projects currently under construction or in the phases of planning or final planning, she has picked up a discernible trend. It seems there are a significant number of examples of retailers announcing reductions in the size of stores due to the increasing popularity of sales growth, but the trend seems to extend to shopping centres as well.

In the US smaller centres tend to be anchored by a grocer or smaller convenience-stores, and tend to comprise of tenants whose focus is on daily necessities, not unlike South Africa. The retailers of daily necessities tend to be more resilient to the impact of online shopping; between 1999 and 2010, e-commerce’s share of food and beverage sales in the US  climbed from 0.1% to 0.4% while clothing climbed from 0.8% to 14.6%.

On-line retail sales are continuing to improve and strengthen, not only in the US but here in South Africa too. Rosenbaum believes the trend is here to stay.

Consumers are recognizing the opportuneness and the more robust inventory of shopping online. It seems that certain retailers, grocery stores and other daily necessities stores, for example, are somewhat invulnerable, though no retail should consider itself immune. These tenants and the centres that accommodate them appear to be the current focus of retail centre developers. Brick-and-mortar retail is certainly not vanishing due to increases in online retail, but some changes are coming; retailers and retail centre developers are adjusting to focus on smaller store formats and centres that are more resistant to e-commerce expansion. It will be interesting to see if/when these trends are taken up by South Africa shopping centre designers, if not already.

This last Christmas, whilst shopping for CDs/DVDs, like I have done for years, yes I’ve been slow to buy music online; I noticed the amount of CD/DVD shops closing had increased, yet further. Even bookshops are fewer, scaled down and not as important as they used to be. However, it’s more likely that we should look in the direction of how retail centres are designed and refurbished as influenced by e-commerce rather than trembling at the prospect of vacancies increasing. On-line shopping is making its mark and will not be ignored. It seems it will change how we build not whether we build shopping centres.