‘Being a pure e-commerce player is less unique than it was. There is more competition. Increasingly, consumers won’t think about online and offline – they will just think about retail.’
Sir Terry Leahy, former CEO of Tesco1
Now that we have established that many more stores will need to close in order to adapt to the change in shopping habits, you might rightly ask why we are now talking about the death of e-commerce and not death of the store.
The simple answer is because, despite the explosive growth of online retail, a whopping 90 per cent of all global retail sales take place in bricks and mortar stores.2 Physical retail must evolve, but it certainly isn’t dying. The underperformers will be weeded out. The undifferentiated will be exposed. The overcapacity issue will be addressed. But make no mistake – the bricks and mortar store will continue to play a crucial role in retail for decades to come.