This paper aims to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retail real estate and high street landscape through acceleration of e-commerce and digitalization. The retail business have been evolving over the past several decades, accentuated by the evolution and development of digital technologies. Almost all parts of the world have witnessed the changes in consumer behavior, the nature of retail, and reshaping of the high street landscape due to the e-commerce revolution and continued expansion. Especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the retail platforms powered by digital technology had to be adapted quickly, and it is expected to continue to support this change as consumers and retailers adjust to new normalities. Moreover, retail real estate is intricately linked with the retail sector dynamics. While lockdown and social distance rules have devastating impacts on “traditional” retail property sector, it may accelerate the evolution process of multi-channel retail and the channel integration role of physical stores and thus, bring in transformations in urban-retail landscape. It is not necessarily leading to an end of high street stores, but it may have a significant impact on retail real estate business. There remains a lack of understanding of how these changes may pan out with a rigorous academic investigation. To close this knowledge gap, we analyze both the strategy event data of a range of UK retailers as well as the insights from interviews with retail asset manager and landlords using a mixed-method approach. The findings indicate an urgent need for physical shops to reposition the functions of their multi-channel business. Our analysis provide significant insights and highlight several implications for retailers, landlords and, also policy-making units dealing with urban regeneration and local economic development in the post-COVID-19 world.

本文旨在通过加速电子商务和数字化探索 COVID-19 大流行对零售房地产和商业街景观的影响。零售业务在过去几十年中不断发展，数字技术的演变和发展更加突出。由于电子商务革命和持续扩张，世界几乎所有地方都见证了消费者行为的变化、零售的性质以及商业街景观的重塑。特别是由于 COVID-19 大流行，数字技术支持的零售平台必须迅速适应，随着消费者和零售商适应新常态，预计将继续支持这种变化。此外，零售房地产与零售行业的动态有着错综复杂的联系。虽然封锁和社交距离规则对“传统”零售物业行业产生了毁灭性的影响，但它可能会加速多渠道零售的演变过程和实体店的渠道整合作用，从而带来城市零售格局的转变。它不一定会导致高街商店的终结，但可能会对零售房地产业务产生重大影响。仍然缺乏对这些变化如何通过严格的学术调查产生影响的理解。为了弥补这一知识差距，我们使用混合方法分析了一系列英国零售商的战略事件数据以及对零售资产经理和房东的采访的见解。调查结果表明，实体店迫切需要重新定位其多渠道业务的功能。