Is there a future for the shopping centre?

The owner of the Trafford Centre and Lakeside insists that physical stores can adapt, writes James Moore – but will they get the chance to prove it?

Intu Properties owns several shopping centres including the Trafford Centre in Manchester (AFP)

The store is not dying. It is evolving. This was the message Matthew Roberts, the CEO of Intu, was keen to stress as the UK’s largest shopping centre operator unveiled a fairly awful set of results

The company produced some statistics to show it too. “First, around 90 per cent of all retail spend is influenced by a physical store, and second, the presence of a physical store can double a retailer’s online sales in that local catchment,” Roberts declared.

And there was more: “Seventy-seven per cent of transactions will still touch a physical store by 2016, even with the overall percentage of online sales increasing from around 20 per cent to 30 per cent.”