Examining the Impact of E-Commerce Growth on the Spatial Distribution of Fashion and Beauty Stores in Seoul
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting and timely paper investigating the impact of online retailing on the spatial distribution of brick-and-mortar fashion & beauty shops. The paper has a clear structure and the writing is largely articulate, using detailed spatial analysis and a range of quantitative analysis. In this way, the paper demonstrates a high potential to be published. This high potential, however, needs to be actualised by tackling the issues described in what follows, centred on research depth, methods, analysis, writing, and so forth. My decision for the current paper is a major revision, and I am looking forward to reviewing the revised manuscript.
COVID-19 was considered a keyword by the authors while the paper does not sufficiently discuss the impact of the ongoing pandemic. I would strongly recommend that COVID-19 should only be regarded as part of the context of the research. The focus of the paper is clearly on the impact of online retailing, and COVID-19 has increased the dependency on or facilitated the shift from brick-and-mortar retailing to online retailing.
Section 3.2 to 3.4 largely list textbook definitions of kernel density, NNR, OLS, and SEM – this would be banal to most readers. The related equations must be geared to the context and content of this research.
The spatial analysis of this research should be much enhanced. Figure 2 lacks legibility: the legends too small to read. It seems that the four maps using the same colour scheme whereas each embodies a different scale of kernel density, leading to confusions. Also, after mentioning Figure 2 in the text, the paper quickly arrives at a key finding that hotspots appeared at the CBD and newly developed urban centres, assuming that all readers have a good knowledge on the location of urban centres in Seoul. My suggestion here is that a map showing the spatial distribution of urban centres in Seoul should be juxtaposed with these four maps of kernel density as the evidence, with at least several sentences connecting the maps to the finding. Further, the depth of the spatial analysis could be increased. Most shops tend to agglomerate in urban centres, and this has been repeatedly verified in many existing literature. What’s new about this research? I think that there are two possible contributions by this research. One is to identify to what degree these four subtypes of fashion & beauty shops are agglomerated in urban centres. The other is to quantitatively measure the differences between these agglomerations and/or to qualitatively discuss how such differences are stimulated.
As to the regression analysis, this paper should better depict the selection criteria for independent variables such as ‘food and beverage stores’, ‘start-up rate’ and ‘private tutoring institute for adults’. Are there any existing studies or reports showing strong effects of these variables on the consumption of fashion & beauty products? There are also a wide range of other variables that may encourage or reduce the consumption of fashion & beauty products. Why are they not taken into account in the research?
The typology of shops needs to be reflected. The four subtypes of fashion & beauty shops used in this research are seemingly categorised by the product type. However, there is another kind of retail classification mingled with the adopted typology: product-based v.s. service- and experience-based shops. Hair, nail, and skin cares – health (HNCH) shows different modes of spatial distribution compared to the other three subtypes largely because of its focus on service and experience – things that can not be easily replaced by online retailing. This also has a significant impact on the results of regression analysis. There are emerging studies identifying the shift of focus in material shopping space from ‘product’ to ‘experience’ (many are published on Sustainability and worth reading; simply search with keywords such as ‘experience’ and ‘online retailing’), and this research provides new evidences on the experiential shift in brick-and-mortar retailing. More discussions on this experiential shift could be added to enhance the depth of analysis.
Next, I am not fully convinced by the discussion on the openings and closures of shops in section 5.2. In particular, there is an inappropriate tendency to draw conclusions on general shops while the analysis of this research is restricted to fashion & beauty shops. Even without online retailing, shops of a particular type would rise and fall – what might be considered a creative-destruction cycle in market economy. How have the regression analysis of this research control variables influencing the openings and closures of shops apart from online retailing?
The implications for practice should be substantially edited. More depth is called for here. Preparing place-based measures makes sense in response to statistical results, while it is too vague and broad for governments or entrepreneurs who are curious to learn how to adapt retail development to the rise of online retailing.
Lastly, there are several suggestions on writing. First, the current title is confusing and convoluted, and it could be edited as ‘Examining the impact of e-commerce growth on the spatial distribution of fashion and beauty stores in Seoul’. Second, in 54 to 55, ‘… relative rates of increase and decrease in online 54 and offline sales …’ could be edited as ‘… the gap between online and offline retail sales …’. Third, it is better not to use the word ‘predict’ or actually predict something in an empirical research that emphasises evidences. For example, in line 543, ‘we predict that …’ and the following prediction reduce the rigour of the empirical study. Fourth, put yourself in the shoes of your readers around the globe. They might not be familiar with won or dong. Why not using the US dollar (a more internationally-used/known currency type) and providing a quantitative/qualitative definition (even a rough one) of dong as an administrative area? There are other related writing quirks to be fixed while I can not list all of them for you. Please carefully read and edit the manuscript.
Good luck with the editing!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review the paper. It's an interesting topic examining the changes in the distribution of 11 retail stores that provide fashion and beauty products and services in terms of the number of online 12 shopping transactions and their spatial characteristics in Seoul. Overall, the purpose and methodology are fine, but I'd like to give the author(s) a few small comments.
- Please check the period of 93.723.9 trillion won in line 49 of page 2.
- It would be better to change the dimensions in Table 5 to full name instead of abbreviation (e.g., Dept., Indep.).
- Please check if the data source format is correct in Table 5.
- Please change to MAPSS on the note at the bottom of Table 7,8,9.
- In the conclusion section the comparisons of the results obtained with other similar studies are missing. The author(s) can try to find other research with similar results.
- Theoretical contributions are absent in the paper.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I am generally satisfied with the revised manuscript and detailed responses to comments except for several minor issues that should be addressed before publication.
1. Many added sentences in the abstract lead to more problems than clarification; they need to be amended.
‘E-commerce has risen dramatically expanded its sales due to people's online shopping preferences with people being increasingly customed to online shopping.’
‘… and found that the growth of e-commerce was (explaining how it is related) associated with the spatial distribution retail stores related to of fashion and beauty stores.’
‘… we expect the prolonged Covid-19 outbreak will (what do you mean by survival distribution? Could it be ‘facilitate the spatial transformation that has been stimulated by the rise of online retailing’ or something else?) affect the survival distribution.’
2. Dong is depicted as an ‘administrative building’ which is a difficult term; try ‘administrative area’ or ‘administrative neighbourhood’.
3. What do you mean by ‘the 52-hour weekly system’ (line 410)? How is this ‘system’ related to people’s spending on education? And how does it foster spatial overlaps between private tutoring institutes and fashion-and-beauty stores using existing literature? After carefully reading the added explanation (line 410 to 416), I was still left perplexed regarding the thread of logic here. Is it mainly about a particular group of consumers who desire for after-hour vocational education and fashion-and-beauty products simultaneously?
4. I would recommend the annual revenues of Amazon.com and Coupang (line 44-48) to be updated to 2020; both numbers should be available now. For example, a Forbes news article reported that ‘Amazon delivered a record performance in 2020 with annual revenue up 38% to $386 billion, a yearly increase of over $100 billion’. This could assist to shape the main argument of the paper more vividly.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2021/02/02/amazons-net-profit-soars-84-with-sales-hitting-386-billion/?sh=32014c513349
5. I would strongly suggest that the authors should review the paper with a fine-tooth comb to sift out any writing quirks before sending the manuscript to the production/editing team and proofreading.
Good luck!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors tried to reflect all the comments by the reviewer.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your good comments.
