The current crisis has hit retail hard and forces retailers to rethink their store network.

Major brands have endured widespread store closures with high level of uncertainty on the eventual sales loss during the crisis. Reopened stores are only achieving 50 – 80% of their normal sales, 300 billion USD has been wiped from offline retail sales in the first four months of 2020 in China alone. At the same time, consumers have cultivated a much stronger online shopping habit than ever before. Undoubtedly, the virus situation is going to bring structural changes to the offline retail landscape as well as the store network of many players. Consumers will exhibit different shopping behaviours than before. Hence, how to optimize and future proof store network has become an even more critical and strategic question.

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