Proximity Trade and Urban Sustainability: Small Retailers’ Expectations Towards Local Online Marketplaces

Juan-Francisco Delgado- de Miguel, Tamar Buil-López Menchero, Miguel-Ángel Esteban-Navarro and Miguel-Ángel García-Madurga
Additional contact information
Juan-Francisco Delgado- de Miguel: Department of Marketing, Esic Business & Marketing School, Vía Ibérica, 28, 50012 Zaragoza, Spain
Tamar Buil-López Menchero: Department of Marketing, Esic Business & Marketing School, Vía Ibérica, 28, 50012 Zaragoza, Spain
Miguel-Ángel Esteban-Navarro: Department of Documentation Sciences and History of Science, University of Zaragoza, Calle de Pedro Cerbuna, 12, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Miguel-Ángel García-Madurga: Department of Business Administration, Betancourt Building, Campus Río Ebro, University of Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 24, 1-20

Abstract: The aim of this research is to identify the expectations offered by small retail businesses towards local online selling platforms as an innovative tool to ensure their future and the urban sustainability. Based on the previous findings obtained from an analysis of trends, actors and marketplaces operating in the retail sector, sixty semi-structured in-depth interviews have been carried out to Spanish local retail managers and owners. Opportunities and risks faced by local online marketplaces are presented from the perspective of small retail stores. Different attitudes towards online shopping platforms have been identified depending on their size, presence and experience in the online world, which has allowed us to categorize local retail businesses in six groups. Despite the perceptual and attitudinal differences between them, it is concluded that merchants have assumed that the current and future business model goes through the digitalization of their businesses and the selling on e-commerce platforms. The coexistence of the e-marketplace and the physical stores, conducted by the same retailers, could have a positive effect on the urban sustainability: on the one hand, with the economic strengthening and renovation of the historical centers and, on the other, with the maintenance of the population and traditional social relationships.

Keywords: urban sustainability; online marketplaces; local retail expectations; Zaragoza (Spain) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/24/7199/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/24/7199/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:24:p:7199-:d:298381

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().