Electronic Commerce and Urban Localization of Commercial Activities
Rallet, Alain
Electronic Commerce and Urban Localization of Commercial Activities - 2001.
86
The aim of this paper is to study the impact of electronic commerce on the urban organization of commercial activities. Despite the weak levels of the present development of e-commerce, significant transformations are expected. Generally confined to online sales, electronic commerce is here defined more broadly as the process of partial digitalization of commercial functions. Any business activity can be analyzed as a hybrid set of physical infrastructures and virtual functions. This hybridization will have an impact on the localization of business activities in the cities, in particular on the center-periphery equilibrium which has characterized the spatial distribution of commercial activities within European cities for the last 30 years. Four key variables are supposed to determine the evolution of the urban structure of commercial activities: the relative importance of online sales in retail commerce, externalities of consumption, social externalities of commerce, transport costs of products and people. Finally, three prospective scenarios are proposed.Classification JEL: D12, L81, L86, R12
Electronic Commerce and Urban Localization of Commercial Activities - 2001.
86
The aim of this paper is to study the impact of electronic commerce on the urban organization of commercial activities. Despite the weak levels of the present development of e-commerce, significant transformations are expected. Generally confined to online sales, electronic commerce is here defined more broadly as the process of partial digitalization of commercial functions. Any business activity can be analyzed as a hybrid set of physical infrastructures and virtual functions. This hybridization will have an impact on the localization of business activities in the cities, in particular on the center-periphery equilibrium which has characterized the spatial distribution of commercial activities within European cities for the last 30 years. Four key variables are supposed to determine the evolution of the urban structure of commercial activities: the relative importance of online sales in retail commerce, externalities of consumption, social externalities of commerce, transport costs of products and people. Finally, three prospective scenarios are proposed.Classification JEL: D12, L81, L86, R12
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