Honors Theses

Advisor

Trevor Collier

Department

Economics and Finance

Publication Date

Spring 4-2016

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Abstract

The history of retail has been an evolutionary process of new innovations and transformations. Previous changes include: the development of catalogue based retail, and the recent innovation of super stores, known as big-box retailers. It is possible that we are dawning upon a new revolution of the retail environment as electronic commerce (e-commerce) continues to grow. This paper will analyze the impact of e-commerce on retail markets, specifically big-box stores (warehouse style retailers with over 750 million in sales). Using financial and real estate data from BloombergTM, and e-commerce data from eMarketerTM and the US Census Bureau two models were built. These two models will be utilized to answer the following questions. Has the growth of e-commerce affected the retail real estate market and the retail financial market? Which retail submarkets have been affected most by the growth of e-commerce? The first model will test whether growth in e-commerce spending in retail submarkets (i.e. sporting goods and bookstores) will cause a decrease in the stock performance of big-box retailers within those market sectors. The second model will test whether growth in the different e-commerce retail submarkets will cause a decrease in the square footage growth rate of the big-box stores in those same retail submarkets.

Permission Statement

This item is protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code) and may only be used for noncommercial, educational, and scholarly purposes.

Keywords

Undergraduate research

Disciplines

Business | Corporate Finance | E-Commerce

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