In this paper, I propose a new retail typology to explore emerging shopping space through the lens of assemblage thinking. The recent rise of online retailing has stimulated substantial net‐closures of brick‐and‐mortar shops—what some call the “retail apocalypse". While being widely covered by the news media, the impact of online retailing on shopping space receives little attention in existing research. There is, in particular, a lack of a retail typology that regards online retailing as a form of shopping space. The current four primary typologies of scale, retail offer, control, and morphology are biased towards material shopping centres (agglomeration of shops). In an attempt to tackle this issue, I introduce Deleuzian assemblage theory. Assemblage prioritises interrelation, transformation, and difference, and suggests that both the virtual and actual are real and they can morph into a whole. In light of assemblage, I redefine a retail type as a “diagram” depicting how some shopping spaces work in general while still being geared to the particularity of each instance, and I focus on the “interface” between people and shops. This diagrammatic typology of interface could thus be adapted to emergent and diversified material, digital, and material/digital shopping spaces.

中文翻译：

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展开物料/数字购物空间：组合方法

在本文中，我提出了一种新的零售类型学，旨在通过组合思维的角度来探索新兴的购物空间。在线零售的最新兴起刺激了实体商店的大量净封闭，有些人称之为“零售启示录”，尽管新闻媒体广泛报道，但在线零售对购物空间的影响却很少受到关注。尤其是缺乏将在线零售视为购物空间形式的零售类型。目前，规模，零售报价，控制和形态的四种主要类型偏向于实质性的购物中心（为了解决这个问题，我介绍了Deleuzian组合理论，即组合优先级之间的相互关系，转换和差异，并暗示虚拟和实际都是真实的，它们可以变形为一个整体。考虑到组合，我将零售类型重新定义为“关系图”，以描述某些购物空间在总体上如何工作，同时仍适应每个实例的特殊性，我着重于人与商店之间的“接口”。接口的这种图解类型可以因此适应于涌现和多样化的材料，数字和材料/数字购物空间。