How Short-term Leasing Can Mitigate Vacancies in Retail Stores : Implementing Short-term Leasing in the Retail Industry

Sammanfattning: Retail is changing. E-commerce is increasing its percentage of total sales while physical storesare closing. This affects how real estate companies work with retail spaces to minimizevacancies, and short-term leasing, also called pop-up stores, is one way to do so. Pop-ups haveexisted in different forms for a very long time. Seasonal stores and farmers markets are twoexamples. The modern-day pop-up, assessed and discussed in this study, is the one not alwaysused for sales purposes but also marketing purposes. This study aims to see how modern-daypop-ups can fill the void left by rapidly closing retail stores.The study was carried out by reviewing existing literature about pop-ups and how they work,followed by semi-structured interviews with real estate companies and consultants throughoutthe property industry. Emphasis was put on bottlenecks and problems with implementing shortterm leasing and how market platforms can aid real estate companies with this.The study shows that real estate companies and the industry as a whole are aware of the statusof traditional retail and that they have started to use short-term leasing to a greater extent thanbefore. The real estate companies were positive towards using short-term leases as a tool tominimize vacancies. However, it also shows some problems with implementing short-termleases from a real estate company's perspective. The main obstacles found during the studywere transparency issues regarding vacant spaces, how short-term leases can negatively affectproperty values, and the time-consuming aspect of signing short-term contracts. Concludingthat market platforms can solve certain problems regarding short-term leases, but others haveto be solved by the real estate industry itself.