AUPO Geographica 41

Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis – Geographica, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2010, pp. 5-20 5 DEVELOPMENT OF RETAIL GEOGRAPHICAL STRUCTURE IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF URBAN ENVIRONMENT CHANGES 1 Zdeněk Szczyrba 1 Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc, 17. listopadu 12, 771 46 Olomouc, [email protected] Abstract In the last 20 years of transformation, the Czech retail business underwent fundamental changes in its territorial and organisational structure and in numerous cases refl ects the model of retail trade transformation within the Central European region. After a long period of time of the development of the so-called socialist trading, the countries in the region were affected, with unprecedented intensity, by new, hitherto unknown forms of retailing within the expansion of foreign retail chains to their markets. Such changes took very marked effect in the urban structure of the landscape in these countries, for example in the Czech Republic. The following paper captures the basic extent of transformation of the Czech retail business and its refl ection in the urban environment. Key words: Czech Republic, internationalisation of retail, urban environment INTRODUCTION joint-ventures and strategic alliances. As a matter of course, they establish their own logistic and distri- Retail trade belongs to the sectors of economy bution centres for supplying the network of their characterised by heavy internationalisation trad- stores. This alone is an interesting geographical ing activities. The essential feature of the current problem allowing the monitoring of complicated retail trade is constant penetration of multina- and ever-changing relations between the manufac- tional retail chains to foreign markets and related turers and the vendors (Birkin et al. 2002:71-88). essential changes to such markets. According to P. The development in the 1990s was, internationally, Dicken (2003:498-500), retail chains, at fi rst, pen- infl uenced by strong internationalisation of newly etrate domestic markets with care, later, however, developing markets in the Latin America, South they show a very strong inclination to localisation Eastern Asia, Central and Southern Europe. The at geographically- and culturally-related markets. scale of the said internationalisation was extensive The main motivation of their transnational expan- and allowed rapid economic growth of several retail sion is saturation, regulation of domestic markets companies and their advance in the ranking of the with intensifi cation of their competitiveness, and world’s top retailers to highest positions (Wrigley the impression that they are able to fi nd new trad- 2003:304-305). ing opportunities on the new, quick-growing markets. They use various methods: building of their The internationalisation caused important organisa- own stores, takeover of existing companies, merger tional changes within the industry but also started with domestic companies, build-up of positions transformation of the geographical organisation through licensing or franchising, establishment of of the retail trade. Influenced heavily by the AUPO Geographica Vol. 41 No. 2, 2010, pp. 5-20 6 Development of retail geographical structure in the Czech Republic construction of large-size stores, territorial param- the organisational and spatial organisation of the eters of the retail chains started to change quickly. industry, one needs to learn, at least in general, the The changes took effect mainly in the cities which broader context of this development. The retail became the primary targets of the expansion of trade in the Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia) in the the international retail networks to new markets period of socialism was controlled, administratively and are of cardinal importance to the creation of and spatially, on the basis of the then political direc- hierarchic structure of the retail network (Berry tive which accepted the real need of availability of 1967). If the transformation of the retail trade is services within the territory only marginally. The perceived as development of retail networks of the socialist model of trade control was distinguished by separate retail companies, then the cities serve as absolute ban of private enterprise and by the deter- nodes in this process (Wilk 2005). The develop- mination of activities of trade companies. Typical ment of large shopping centres and hypermarkets, of the said period were large-size state-run stores shopping units unknown on new Central European (Pramen, Prior) and cooperatives (Jednota) whose markets at that time, and rerouting of shopping business was determined by the political direc- fl ow to those centres caused absolutely essential tive. Therefore, since 1952, the cooperatives began changes in the arrangement of retail functions in focusing on enterprising in the country, while the the cities. Locations of commercial suburbanisa- state trade stores were intended for cities (Szczyrba tion began gradually emerge in large cities, and due 2005).1 This was also the beginning of the process to decentralisation tendencies, typical of large-area of spatial levelling in the area of offer of services retail trade, the function of city centres weakened which was the broadest among socialist countries and gave way to polycentric arrangements of retail (Drtina and Krásný 1989). functions in the cities (Heineberg 2006:194-198). Such development of post-socialist cites was doc- The localisation of stores did not correspond to the umented by numerous examples: in Poland (Wilk distribution of demand, resulting in the overloading 2005; Namyślak, 2006), in Slovakia (Mitríková 2008; of the retail network in the city centres. By contrast, Trembošová 2010), in the Czech Republic (Mulíček the capacity of selling space was insuffi cient in the 2004, 2007; Szczyrba 2004, 2005). The develop- peripheral locations of numerous cities, especially ment of the large-area retail network also caused within the exurbanite areas with high concentration vast changes to the shopping behaviour (Spilková of residents. Quite often, this sombre situation was 2003). Apart from these subjects, “traditional” contrasted by illogical construction of stores in towns in respect of geography, also new themes appear, and villages caused by fulfi lling the goals contained in related to the infl uence of the large-size retail stores the conceptual framework of development of the set- upon the changes in the territorial structure of the tlement pattern set out in 1974. The said goals were retail network. These include, for instance, the for- the levelling aspect of further phase of market devel- mation of the so-called food deserts, areas within opment in the socialist Czechoslovakia.2 A number large cities with limited number of grocery stores of papers and studies pointed out that the situation for the local residents (Wrigley 2002). The capital of the retail network was insuffi cient and unsatisfac- of Slovakia served as a basis for determination of tory, not only in comparison with the advanced econ- a new food desert by Križan and Danielová (2008) omies of Western Europe. For instance, the study and Križan et al. (2008). into the optimisation of retail network published in 1988 (Šimůnek et al.) shows signifi cant shortcomings MAIN FEATURES OF RETAIL TRADE in the retail offer in most cities, especially the largest TRANSFORMATION AFTER 1989 ones (Prague, Brno). Similar fi ndings in the area of facilities in Czech cities were published by J. Maryáš To understand the processes taking place on the 1 Before this decision, the Czech and Moravian cooperative territory of the Czech Republic in the sphere of societies represented trade elements typical of cities. retail trade after 1989, the creation of the retail 2 These were laid out in the document “Centralized Arrange- network, to specify the basic processes affecting ment of Settlement.” AUPO Geographica Vol. 41 No. 2, 2010, pp. 5-20 Development of retail geographical structure in the Czech Republic 7 (1990). Insuffi cient investments into the develop- This initial stage of transformation of the Czech ment of the retail network amounted to mere 50% retail trade is illustrated by the results of the Retail in comparison with Western European countries. Census 99. This census showed that the number of The same level was also attained by the indicators retail shops operated on the territory of the Czech of the space standard and service standard (Drtina Republic in 1998 more than doubled as against and Krásný 1989). The retail network before 1989 the quantity in 1998, from 41 thousand to almost was, in many aspects, insuffi cient within the context 96 thousand. The most considerable quantitative of actual demand and incompatible in comparison change within the said transformation period took w with Western European countries, for instance as place in the nonfood-type stores (more than four- to the structure of the assortment of goods. As was fold increase). Within the retail network, small stores stated above, shortcomings in the retail facilities with up to 40 m2 took the largest share (60%). As the respect to the actual demand were more marked in retail census data showed, the effi ciency of opera- the cities as against the country. tion of stores in the country dropped as against the cities that, on the contrary, began consolidation of Stages of the development of the new geo- their positions within the retail system. graphical structure The development in the retail industry

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