predictions....bcsc

The British Council of Shopping Centres, BCSC, produced a report, The Future of Retail Property 2007, which is one of the only attempts at researching the likely impact of decreased consumer spend on the high street, and the effects on the physical retail property, and whilst largely a factual document, at the time the internet (2007) could be seen to be as mature as it is today, and thus the perceived impact at that time is not as great as we can hypothesis now.

The paper is written about the future of retail property, yet the Internet features only towards the end of the report, and for a very small section. It is largely a positive paper,in favour of shopping centres, perhaps biased and commissioned for the wrong reasons.

In the paper they discuss “that small and medium sized shopping places will suffer the biggest loss of trade to the internet because their comparison goods is relatively low level and commoditised” (P.47) and point out “shopping is an experience, and it’s our right rather than a means to an end”. Whilst the prediction is correct the effects can be seen to be greater than they predict, and their assumption falls far short of today’s reality.

It would appear that there is a gap in the research relating directly to retail internet spend, and the increased effects that this will have on the high street, which is somewhat already under pressure due to the growth of the supermarkets. It would be easy to disagree with this latter statement, and whilst shopping does form part of our culture, if this is taken away then the existence of shopping just becomes a function, rather than the experience they talk about.
The BCSC predict that online shopping will account for 10.7% of retail sales by 2015, a figure grossly underestimated, as we are in 2011 and this figure is already three times the amount. We must question this research in the main body, and how valid it’s research actually is, as they represent the UK shopping centre industry and perhaps are a little biased.

They concluded this section of the paper indicating that “ shopping is a social activity in the main, particularly for women, and there are no signs that women are likely to change their shopping habits”. Further research is certainly needed on this statement.