Time for retail REITs to get smart

SINGAPORE (Dec 11): The size of the e-commerce market in Singapore was about $1.5 billion in 2016, nearly three times what it was in 2011. According to a report by Temasek and Google, it is expected to exceed $7 billion by 2025, making up 6.7% of retail sales in the country.

As consumers change the way they shop and engage with brands they like in evermore immersive ways, all players in the retail sector have to adapt or face extinction. This isn’t just about offering shoppers bargains online. As marketing pundits have repeatedly explained, retailing in the digital era is not about price but experience.

In hindsight, since the 1990s, when the first wave of disruptive online retailers appeared in the form of Amazon.com and eBay, it has never been a good idea to resist change stemming from radical innovation in the retail sector. Everything that has happened is a textbook illustration of what 20th century Austrian-born American economist Joseph Schumpeter called “the gale of creative destruction”.

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