Research areas

During the latest decades, retailing has been going through a period of extensive structural transformation. External retail areas have grown outside city centers, creating challenges for retailing  in both city centers  and suburbs. E-commerce has also increased its market share at the expense of traditional retailing, with major consequences for the geographical location of trade. Research that focuses on understanding these developments constitute one of our priority research areas at the Institute of Retail Economics.

Retailing is going through a comprehensive restructuring process where e-commerce is growing and taking market shares from traditional retailing. The digitalisation of retailing also means that international players are increasingly competing with local retailers and retail chains. Today, consumers can quickly find the lowest price for a large number of products via price comparison websites, as well as get information about available retailers, delivery times, shipping costs, etc. This development has reduced consumer search costs and thereby changed the competitive environment for the physical stores.

We investigate the institutional conditions for firm growth and development within this research area, with a special focus on the conditions for retailers and firms active in other service industries. Firms within these industries have the potential to create jobs for those groups of employees who have difficulties in establishing themselves in the labor market. The service industries are also becoming increasingly important for overall economic development, which means that there is a need to understand how institutions should be designed to create growth and new jobs among service firms.