Analysis on the Change of Online and Offline Sales in Commercial Districts amid the Growth of E-commerce: Focusing on Major Commercial Districts in Seoul

With the growth of the e-commerce market, the retail market changes in the direction of online shopping replacing offline shopping. However, some commercial areas witness gradual increase of sales from offline stores and some commercial areas experience a new growth pattern where both online and offline sales increase together. The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of commercial areas with growing sales in the era of e-commerce by analyzing the changes in online and offline sales focusing on 253 major commercial districts in Seoul. To this end, clustering analysis is presented to classify commercial districts with different pattern of online and offline sales, and multinomial logistic regression is suggested to identify the characteristics of commercial districts which experience sales growth. The results show that it is necessary to have a strategy to grow both online and offline sales by supporting ICT industry, or explore ways to increase the competitiveness of the commercial districts. On the contrary, it is necessary to establish exit strategies to induce transition to new growth engines by providing incentives for changing the use to office, logistics or residential areas for commercial areas with low competitiveness.