Behind the Web Store: The Organisational and Spatial Evolution of Multichannel Retailing in Toronto

10.1068/a3562 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (8) ◽  
pp. 1411-1441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Currah

In this paper I address two issues of general relevance to contemporary debates in economic geography: first, the organisational and spatial implications of new information technologies for the economic landscape; and, second, the enduring role of place to digital capitalism. Specifically, I examine the organisational evolution of multichannel retailing in Toronto from a geographical perspective. Bricks-and-mortar retailers are increasingly pursuing a multichannel strategy by operating an Internet-based web store alongside the existing network of physical retail outlets. I therefore evaluate the organisational implications of the adoption of business-to-consumer e-commerce (e-tailing) technology for six Canadian bricks-and-mortar retailers based in Toronto and assess how the associated changes in business structure have been inscribed upon the urban landscape. The argument is developed in three sections. First, I discuss how the formula for competitive advantage in the new (r)etail markets of the developed world has shifted from a pure play to a multichannel organisational paradigm. Second, I provide a background to the development of Canadian e-commerce and an overview of the empirical methodologies employed during the research. Third, the focus of the paper moves ‘behind the web store’ to spatialise the physical places that constitute the fulfilment infrastructure of e-tailing as sequentially linked stages in Internet commodity chains. I evaluate the impact of the Internet commodity chain upon the geographical organisation of each retailer, and, in particular, consider whether the unique logistical requirements of e-tailing have stimulated spatial processes of disintermediation and reintermediation. It is argued that, when read through the lens of Toronto, e-tailing has incurred limited organisational disruption and is characterised by a distinctive geography of integration between online and offline retailing services within the urban space of the city. I conclude the paper by contextualising the findings within themes for conceptual debate in economic geography.

Author(s):  
Kelly O'Neill

This chapter examines the flow of goods across and through Crimea in an attempt to understand the impact of Russian rule on the economic landscape. It focuses on the patterns of exchange and consumption, arguing for the significance of small-scale transactions for understanding the economic geography of the region. While Russian officials were eager to facilitate and control Black Sea trade, farmers and gardeners and craftsmen began participating in the system of overland markets and fairs that connected the southern provinces to merchants and consumers everywhere from Kharkov and Moscow to Nizhnii Novgorod and Kazan. The Crimean economy thus moved southward toward Constantinople and northward toward Moscow, yet the towns of the peninsula remained key nodes of consumption and production, the orchards and vineyards key sites of prosperity.


Food Security ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kiaka ◽  
Shiela Chikulo ◽  
Sacha Slootheer ◽  
Paul Hebinck

AbstractThis collaborative and comparative paper deals with the impact of Covid-19 on the use and governance of public space and street trade in particular in two major African cities. The importance of street trading for urban food security and urban-based livelihoods is beyond dispute. Trading on the streets does, however, not occur in neutral or abstract spaces, but rather in lived-in and contested spaces, governed by what is referred to as ‘street geographies’, evoking outbreaks of violence and repression. Vendors are subjected to the politics of municipalities and the state to modernize the socio-spatial ordering of the city and the urban food economy through restructuring, regulating, and restricting street vending. Street vendors are harassed, streets are swept clean, and hygiene standards imposed. We argue here that the everyday struggle for the street has intensified since and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mobility and the use of urban space either being restricted by the city-state or being defended and opened up by street traders, is common to the situation in Harare and Kisumu. Covid-19, we pose, redefines, and creates ‘new’ street geographies. These geographies pivot on agency and creativity employed by street trade actors while navigating the lockdown measures imposed by state actors. Traders navigate the space or room for manoeuvre they create for themselves, but this space unfolds only temporarily, opens for a few only and closes for most of the street traders who become more uncertain and vulnerable than ever before, irrespective of whether they are licensed, paying rents for vending stalls to the city, or ‘illegally’ vending on the street.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 858
Author(s):  
Wojciech Kisiała ◽  
Izabela Rącka

One of the main pillars of sustainable urban development at the local scale is to control the social aspect of urban equality of socio-economic systems. A number of studies confirm that poverty in urban space is accompanied by negative phenomena, such as high unemployment, social pathologies, increased crime rate, or the high level of the decapitalization of space, including the poor condition of housing and municipal infrastructure. However, there is a gap in defining the relation between urban poverty and city structure to control and preferably minimize social inequalities. The aim of the study was to empirically verify the impact of the location of residential properties in relation to poverty-stricken areas in the city. The research covered the housing market in one Polish city (Kalisz) in the years 2006–2018. By applying GIS technologies, we identified the location of each property in relation to poverty areas. The data was subjected to regression analysis, with the use of the hedonic approach based on exponential models. The analysis of data allowed us to conclude that location in a poorer area does affect the prices of new flats, which is not only a contribution to the development of science, but is also information that could be used by developers or property valuers to establish the prices of flats, as well as city managers to avoid pauperization of urban districts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis C. Drivas ◽  
Damianos P. Sakas ◽  
Georgios A. Giannakopoulos ◽  
Daphne Kyriaki-Manessi

In the Big Data era, search engine optimization deals with the encapsulation of datasets that are related to website performance in terms of architecture, content curation, and user behavior, with the purpose to convert them into actionable insights and improve visibility and findability on the Web. In this respect, big data analytics expands the opportunities for developing new methodological frameworks that are composed of valid, reliable, and consistent analytics that are practically useful to develop well-informed strategies for organic traffic optimization. In this paper, a novel methodology is implemented in order to increase organic search engine visits based on the impact of multiple SEO factors. In order to achieve this purpose, the authors examined 171 cultural heritage websites and their retrieved data analytics about their performance and user experience inside them. Massive amounts of Web-based collections are included and presented by cultural heritage organizations through their websites. Subsequently, users interact with these collections, producing behavioral analytics in a variety of different data types that come from multiple devices, with high velocity, in large volumes. Nevertheless, prior research efforts indicate that these massive cultural collections are difficult to browse while expressing low visibility and findability in the semantic Web era. Against this backdrop, this paper proposes the computational development of a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that utilizes the generated big cultural data analytics and improves the visibility of cultural heritage websites. One step further, the statistical results of the study are integrated into a predictive model that is composed of two stages. First, a fuzzy cognitive mapping process is generated as an aggregated macro-level descriptive model. Secondly, a micro-level data-driven agent-based model follows up. The purpose of the model is to predict the most effective combinations of factors that achieve enhanced visibility and organic traffic on cultural heritage organizations’ websites. To this end, the study contributes to the knowledge expansion of researchers and practitioners in the big cultural analytics sector with the purpose to implement potential strategies for greater visibility and findability of cultural collections on the Web.


2005 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 895-907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Goelman

My research explores the question: how can theorists better understand the ways in which planning technologies are used by municipal planners? In the case-study municipality, a recently introduced web-GIS technology had little demonstrable success in attaining two of its stated goals: enabling increased public access to municipal geographic information and encouraging planners to produce their own maps. My research links these outcomes not only to the technologies themselves, but to organizational structure and human agency. Planners and planning theorists can gain additional insight into the impact of planning technologies through closer attention to the process through which planners come to use information technologies and the way this process both alters and is constrained by existing organizational constraints, including previously adopted technologies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (11) ◽  
pp. 1275-1276
Author(s):  
A. Thomson
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-46
Author(s):  
Ra’no Parpieva ◽  
◽  
Nafisa Norboyeva ◽  
Adiba Turayeva

This article will serve to select the system required for the effective use of information and communication technologies in the banking system and the impact of national payment systems in the banking sector on modern society, the effective use of new modern information technologies in the system.Study of foreign experience to select information and communication technologies that should be used in modern banks with information and communication technologies in the banking system, which have been used before.


Author(s):  
Yuliya Tymchyshyn ◽  

The article highlights the impact of information technology on the economic security of regions and threats to economic security of the region that arise from the use of information technology. The system of economic security of the region in the context of development and application of information technologies is considered, which should include the following elements: diagnostics and identification of the existing state of economic security of the region; identification of threats to the economic security of the region from the use of information technology by business entities and from trends and problems in the development of the IT sector in the region; assessment of identified threats; development of effective mechanisms for their prevention; ensuring the increase of the level of economic security of the region with observance of the balance of national, regional and local interests; monitoring the level of economic security of the region. The main tasks of monitoring the economic security of the region in the context of development for the use of information technology are analyzed: monitoring the state of development of the IT sphere of the region and the level of ICT use in the activities of enterprises; timely detection of changes occurring in the IT sphere of the region and in the activities of economic entities of the region in the process of using information technology, and the reasons that caused them; prevention of negative trends leading to the formation and development of tensions in the IT sphere and socio-economic space of the region to prevent threats to its economic security; implementation of short-term forecasting of trends in the most important processes in the IT sphere of the region and in the functioning of economic entities from other sectors of the economy, due to the widespread use of IT in commercial, management and production activities; assessment of the effectiveness of methods, organizational structures and processes of managing the economic security of the region in terms of information development of society and the deep penetration of IT in various areas of management and economic activity at the regional level. The principles of monitoring the economic security of the region in the context of development and application of information technologies are revealed. The requirements to be met by the mechanism of economic security of the region, related to the intensification of informatization processes and the development of the IT sphere, are described. The functions that should be performed by the mechanism of economic security of the region (MESR) related to the intensification of informatization processes and the development of the IT sphere are substantiated. The main groups of computer crimes with the use of information computer technologies are identified, which have an extremely sharp impact on the economic condition of both a particular enterprise and the region as a whole.


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