Resilience of Retailing: From the Perspective of Chinese Daily Shopping Distance in Three Stages Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has a major impact on people's daily shopping. Geographers need to consider the characteristics of the commercial layout in order to be resilient when the pandemic comes. This chapter compares the Chinese people's daily shopping distances in three stages. Stage 1 is 1 year before the strict lockdown (January 23, 2019 to January 23, 2020). On January 23, 2020 the city of Wuhan temporarily closed its airport and railway station. Six departments, including China's National Health Commission, issued an announcement on the Prevention of COVID-19 by Strict Transport Control. Stage 2 is the period of strict pandemic control (January 23 to April 27, 2020). Stage 3 is the period of regular pandemic control (April 27, 2020 to February 18, 2021, the last day of this survey). During Stage 3, the lockdown has only been implemented in high-risk areas in China. We divide the study areas into four zones old city, new city, suburban and rural areas. Three types of daily shopping were investigated buying fresh foods, household supplies, and medical supplies. This study uses the change in shopping distance of sampled interviewees to measure the resilience of retail layout in response to the pandemic. The conclusions are that the retail layout in China has the resilience to deal with the pandemic in general and that resilience varies in the different zones. The resilience of retail layout in response to the pandemic can also be measured by more dimensions, which is what we need to explore in the future. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.