Cityhandelns konkurrens från externhandel och e-handel

Sammanfattning: Traditionally, city commerce has always had a strong foothold in Swedish cities. However, in recent years the city commerce has experienced a weaker growth in comparison with external shopping and e-commerce. While the external shopping sector is experiencing competition from its own sector and e-commerce and struggles with an over-supply of malls it’s still a tough competitor to city commerce. Despite its problems, the growth in the external shopping sector has led to an increased amount of malls and retail parks being built. E-commerce have seen a strong increase in its sales and is expected to affect all physical commerce in the near future. Durable goods which is the city commerce biggest branch according to revenue have in recent years had a declining trend. This while the branch commercial service has improved its revenue in most city centers. The demand for commercial services has increased which has resulted in a clear changeover from durable goods to commercial services in most Swedish cities. The purpose of this master thesis is to examine how city commerce is affected by external shopping, e-commerce and commercial service. Furthermore, we investigate what the success factors are for an attractive city commerce. Also, this essay examines if there’s any economical initiative for real estate owners to invest in their own city to improve the city shopping. In order to answer how external shopping, e-commerce and commercial service affects durable goods a regression analysis is used with the revenue for durable goods as the explaining variable. Our hypothesis is that external shopping and e-commerce will have a negative impact on the revenue of durable goods but that the effect of commercial service could be both positive and negative. The effect could be positive due to spillover effects or it could be negative due to the fact that commercial service is growing at the expense of durable goods. Furthermore, the essay consists of an interview study with real estate owners whom own store premises and associations for retail. One real estate owner and one association for retail was interviewed per city, making it a total of four cities. The cities investigated is Helsingborg, Landskrona, Malmö and Ängelholm. Malmö and Ängelholm has had a positive development in its city commerce while Helsingborg and Landskrona has seen a reduction in city commerce. The aim of the interviews is to examine what the strategies and arrangements are that improves the city commerce and if real estate owners should invest in its cities. The conclusion of this report is that the external shopping has a negative effect on durable goods in city centers but that its effect varies depending on the size of the municipality and if the external shopping is additional or competing. E-commerce is believed to have a negative effect but as we lack data about e-commerce regional revenue we can’t make any conclusion for sure. Therefore, it’s not possible to reject the hypothesis that e-commerce has a positive effect on durable goods. Though the theory presented in this article suggest that there is a negative effect. Commercial service proved to have a positive effect on durable goods. One interesting observation is that commercial service have a strong correlation with the population of a city. Therefore, there is probably a spillover effect, when people travel to city centers to use different kinds of commercial services they see the opportunity to shop durable goods as well. The hypothesis that the growth in commercial services occur at the expense of durable goods was unable to answer. To answer that that hypothesis further studies are required, including studying change in the number of store units. The conclusion from the interview study is that in order for a city to have a successful city commerce the city needs to have a good mixture of stores, a good cooperation between real estate owners, centralization of the city commerce, accessibility for cars and parking spaces and retailers who are willing to provide extra service for their customers. The study also showed that it is profitable for a real estate owner to invest in the city. In the cities where investments have been made there was an increase in city commerce revenue.