At a welcome for the Russian Post at the DHL Innovation Center near Cologne/Germany Prof.Dr.Hallier explained the future of retail as a Consortium of Partners where the traditional retailers contribute their assortment-competence, while market-research or distribution could be headed by Third Parties. B2B and B2C will merge - and Cash & Carry could become just a platform depot; and also the size of the retail store will no longer dominate the academic definitions of store formats (discount, supermarket, hypermarkets).

Hallier pointed out that already now the digitalization is increasind the factor speed in competition: either concerning assortments on the in-store shelves or in delivery to the consumers. In Germany according to EHI-Research about 56 percent of food deliveries are organized on average within 24 hours - in Hongkong Foodpanda delivers already short-distance within 15 minutes!
 

Already since his PhD-thesis Prof.Dr.Hallier is involved in Sector Analysis versus Macro-Economics (berndhallier.de). In 2011 he was honored by the VSE Prague/CZ for his research about the 25-years-cycles of trade since 1800.

His latest observations focus on continents as global innovation hubs: Europe in the 19th century with the Commonwealth and Sea Ports, the USA in the 20th century with self-service and mass-data-mining and now in the 21st century Asia with grab-and-go cashless stores and the Internet of Things as a driver behind. More from Philippine Retailing (Link) .
 

Town Planning has changed its focus in Europe all 25 years: after World War II the hot topic was New Homes, followed due to mobilization in the 70ies by Suburban Living/Shopping Centers; while in the end of the century City Marketing was searching for an update of downtown in balance with Regional Marketing. Now new technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) enable town-planners to create Smart Cities.

At www.european-retail-academy.org/AEUC a research-project accumulates international studies in a reader with the titel of "Smart Cities" - and in April in Aachen/Germany the reputated international congress of CORP is offering a broad range of new insights: see forecast of presentations (Here).
 

According to Prof.Dr.B.Hallier the combination of Research & Penetration is the success-story of the worldleading exhibition EuroShop for shopfitting, retail technology, POS-Marketing. His exchange-students are part of the communication training for applied sciences (see: YouTube video)

"Students not only use our Sites like www.european-retail-academy.org/EUCVOT as training tools - they develop it ongoing by adding their newest technical skills: by this they are the Young Stars of driving innovation. Such a development can be seen also by comparing the above YouTube with the last EuroShop/EuroCIS YouTube of 2019 (EuroCIS 2019)".
 

Prof.Dr.Th.Purcarea reflects about the last 25 years of permanent changes in Romania, the EU and globally - and how to support the new requirements by their national Association Magazin of Distribution and the academic publication "Holistic Marketing Management Journal".

Historically he sees the kick-off for Romania when 24 years ago the OECD highlighted the need for new indicators of human capital, training and labour requirements while focusing for the knowledge-based economy (OECD/GD (96) ,102), the indicators of the knowledge distribution power and other characteristics of innovation.