Together with the rise of online shopping, announcements of ‘the retail apocalypse’ and ‘the death of distance’ were replete in both scientific literature and popular media. Although to different extents than anticipated at the time, more than a decade later, e-commerce’s transformative impact on the urban retail landscape is undeniable. In an attempt to remain relevant in the e-commerce era, traditional retailers converted to ‘multichannel’ and ‘omnichannel’ models, in which they combine online and ‘offline’ retail channels (Verhoef et al., 2015). While multichannel retailers manage and optimise performance of each channel, omnichannel retailers focus on integrating activities across channels (Ailawadi and Farris, 2017).
Rather than a supply chain destination heading towards extinction, today’s stores are multifunctional hubs. They act as showrooms, collection points, returns facilities, micro-warehouses and micro-fulfilment centres, thereby catering to contemporary consumer behaviour and expectations (Buldeo Rai et al., 2019). As ‘warestores’ (i.e., with a part of the store dedicated to fulfilment) and ‘dark stores’ (i.e., with the entire store temporarily or permanently dedicated to fulfilment), they become even more essential elements in urban logistics operations (Sheffi, 2020).
Building on the body of research on online and omnichannel retailing and urban logistics, this chapter outlines how stores in its various designs function and operate in the retail landscape. It outlines differences between food and non-food retail and between formerly traditional retailers and platform-based start-ups. Based on analyses of company accounts in the business press and observations of generated transport intensities, the article also details operational, economic and spatial characteristics of omnichannel stores, warestores and dark stores in Paris, and other cities who have seen their commercial real estate and goods mobility patterns change tremendously in recent years.
Mots clés : City logistics|Urban warehousing|Omnichannel retail|Dark stores|Warestores
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