Retailing is undergoing a revolution. The rise of online commerce is shaking some of the retail industry’s biggest names, forcing many to retool their businesses for the digital age and killing off weaker members of the herd. The US retail world is particularly challenged, given the vast overbuilding of stores and shopping malls in recent decades. Here are some charts that both on a micro and macro level show how retail is being reshaped by e-commerce.
This is beginning to bite so-called “real estate investment trusts”, or REITs, which buy up shopping malls and lease out space to big anchor retailers like Sears, and smaller ones that then set up around them. Footfalls at malls owned by several major REITs are dipping, according to mobile geolocation data collected by Thasos Group.
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