U.K. Retail Real Estate and the Effects of Online Shopping

can be more secure in the view that shoppers will continue to shop in physical stores and “pure play” e-tailers will have their work cut out just to stay afloat. Our research, presented in this paper, shows that conventional store-based shopping in the U.K. is certainly not dead. However, e-commerce will continue to have an effect on future patterns of real estate development through its impact on shoppers and retailers. “E-commerce” is commonly viewed as trade that actually takes place on the Internet, usually through a buyer visiting a seller’s Web site and making a transaction there. However, the term has evolved from this fairly limited notion to mean all aspects of business and market processes enabled by the Internet and World Wide Web technologies. The impact of the Web is global and affects processes within businesses, between businesses, and between businesses and consumers. The U.K. Cabinet Office defines the term more formally as: