The Retail Resilience Dilemma: Balancing Scale In The New Era

Retailing is an industry with particularly puzzling characteristics that create an enigma in an extremely important sector of the economy. In addition to methodological issues, it raises a number of dilemmas of interpretation, understanding, and perspective. Dilemmas concerning the size of the firm, the importance of the physical store, the resilience of micro and nano, but also their survival with a significant presence in social formations. In particular, the survival and resilience of the microphysical store cannot be explained by economic analysis alone. A number of social and even psychological factors, both on the part of retailers and especially of consumers, must be included in any explanatory scheme.