Spatial organisation of the new forms of e-grocery and ready-made food trade in a large Russian city

Abstract

This work aims to identify fundamentally new features in the spatial organization of e-grocery and ready-made food trade in a Russian city, distinct from those typical of traditional food retail enterprises. Focusing on St Petersburg, the article describes the emergence of a completely different system of requirements imposed by new forms of online food retail in the space of a large Russian city, compared with traditional industries and retail organization methods. The spatial and temporal parameters of the new shopping model are considered, and a comparative analysis of its spatial competition with already established models is presented. The spatial organization of new online food retail is demonstrated in the context of the placement system of new types of offline objects, the emergence of new flows, their impact on urban development and the effect on the outdoor and transit advertising markets, as well as on the labor market. Based on this analysis, it is concluded that new-type physical objects such as distribution warehouses, warehouse stores (fulfilment centres) and dot-com objects are placed according to entirely different principles. If the location of a service point is no longer a competitive advantage as seen by the buyer, faster delivery, hidden from the consumer, emerges as a critical factor in new competition. The paper also analyses the significance of spatial organization principles associated with this factor.