- Analyzing the Retail Structure Change of Izmir-Turkey: Integrative and Disintegrative Aspects of Large-Scale Retail Developments    770 kb by    Kompil, Mert & Çelik, H. Murat | mertkompil@iyte.edu.tr    Short Outline The study intends to analyze the retail structure change of Izmir in terms of large-scale retail developments (supermarket-hypermarket) and traditional retail environments (grocery) exploring integrative and disintegrative aspects of transformations. Abstract The retail sector has radically been altered in terms of scale, organization, and its geographical representation especially in the last two decades. The changing demographic, socio-economic and physical conditions of the world have witnessed considerable changes in retailing, and the urban spaces have been the scene of these ongoing changes. Accompanying with the global economic transformations after 80's, there have also been dramatic changes in retail sector and retail environment in Turkey. Unlike the developed countries, half of the sector in Turkey is still dominated by large number of small-scale, single location retailers. However, market share and spatial prevalence of large-scale retailers have been increasing rapidly. Especially in major cities of the country, international and domestic retail chains have been imposing a transformation, and restructuring the urban retail environments. Similarly, the retail geography in Izmir has been changing rapidly especially in the field of food retailing. The arrival of the new large-scale retail formats such as supermarkets and hypermarkets has been profound effects on the traditional retail structure and hierarchy. Inevitably, the drastic change in the retail structure has had many economic, social and business implications as well as noteworthy spatial consequences on the urban geography. The study identifies the spatial pattern of this ongoing retail structure and hierarchy change in Izmir Metropolitan Area and intends to clarify integrative and disintegrative aspects of large-scale retail developments along with possible retail transformations. Keywords retail change, large-scale retailing, food retailing Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2006: Cities between Integration and Disintegration   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper