5 ms·

The demise of department stores in the UK has been partly driven by the rise of supermarkets and out of town retail parks. UK towns are historically car unfrie

The demise of department stores in the UK has been partly driven by the rise of supermarkets and out of town retail parks. UK towns are historically car unfriendly, frequently jammed with traffic, and car parks are costly. Local councils have permitted out of town retail parks with their own free parking often building new dual carriageways and roads to reach them. People preferentially go there instead. Supermarkets moved out of town, so no need to go into your local town for necessities, i.e. food any more, therefore no more casual shopping. And lastly supermarkets and other shops have started selling clothes, kitchenware, and electronics all of which used to be in department stores. There's no necessary reason (food) to venture into your own town any more. Local council planners mostly caused this, and the internet finished them off. The irony that every local council in England talks about 'saving the high street', without the self awareness that they caused the problem, and are still causing it.

baybal2 5y ago
I found your answer very insightful. Did you research this professionally?
Veen 5y ago
> UK towns are historically car unfriendly What’s the alternative? Most town centres were planned in previous centuries. Councils can’t save the high street by tearing down the medieval streets and rebuilding them so they’re more like US cities. Besides, most towns have park and ride for precisely this reason.
- DrBazza 5y ago
  If I knew the alternative, I wouldn't be a keyboard expert on the subject :D In my part of SE England, there's 2 towns in the entire country that have park and ride. And it's hardly used. We genuinely need 'build new villages', rather than 'surround towns with bland housing estates and retail parks'. Until the UK local government town "planners" plan, the problem is here for decades.
  - Veen 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree with that, but building new villages on greenbelt land is another highly contentious issue.
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  What about high rise (3 storey store with 3 storey parking) department stores in city/town centers? I've seen plenty of these in Asia
  - cnorthwood 5y ago
    Building more parking doesn't solve the issue of congestion, it just makes it worse.
    - dazc 5y ago
      True, I used to have an office in small town centre with both cheap parking (£1.20 for 2 hours) and free parking (for 1 hour). The streets are gridlocked every day with people driving into the centre looking for an elusive 'free' space. Whenever I complained people would say it was necessary to bring trade into the town despite the fact that half the shops had already closed down.
  - Animats 5y ago
    The original: "Parkington Shopping Center", Arlington, VA, 1951.[1] The first suburban mall with a multi-story parking garage. The mall has been replaced, but the parking structure lives on.[2] [1] https://arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org/2017/11/a-parkington-christmas/ https://arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org/2017/11/a-parkington-... [2] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Glebe+Rd/@38.87877572,-77.10929008,86.53742218a,0d,47.53014536y,288.03542167h,93.60470167t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/search/Glebe+Rd/@38.87877572,-7...
- pharmakom 5y ago
  The Netherlands shows how this stuff can be done. Unfortunately the UK is allergic to borrowing the best ideas from other countries. A grand NIH syndrome.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Could you elaborate on what The Netherlands does differently?
    - pharmakom 5y ago
      Some ways NL is different: - removal of parking spaces in urban centers (good luck doing that in the UK! People literally protest in the streets) - large scale secure bike parking in train stations - reliable and extensive rail network - segregated bike paths between major towns and on majority of urban routes - bike paths open to mobility assistance vehicles (independence for those too old to drive or with disabilities) - one way and access only streets for motor traffic, walking and cycling is allowed / two way - direct routes and bridges in urban areas reserved for walkers and cyclists, drivers must take long way around - school buses replaced with guided cycling and cycle busses for children - maintenance of cycle paths through winter (e.g. de-icing) All of this creates spaces where people want to spend time, as opposed to more transactional journeys to out of town stores. The outcome is bustling high streets, cafe culture, etc. Children have some of highest independence and happiness scores in the world. Lower obesity and diseases of inactivity compared to most of developed world.
      - tailspin2019 5y ago
        Hmm, very interesting. It seems the UK has a long way to go... I definitely agree that there is a lot we could learn from some of our European neighbours.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
London councils, with their predatory parking restrictions are helping to stifle the high street further.
- DrBazza 5y ago
  It's just the same out here in the shires. My local council charges something in the region of £4 for 2 hours. I say "something" because as you might guess, and from my parent comment, I have no reason to go into the town, and that's what I can remember from about 3 or 4 years ago! My council claim it's a source of revenue, but then moan that they own the shops in the town and no one is taking up leases. Local shop owners have begged the council to make the car parks free on a trial to see what happens, and the council's response was a) increase the parking fees, b) sell off a car park to a property developer who built an office block, c) sell off a second car park for some 'outdoor cafe culture' development with flats (because the UK is warm in the evenings all year round).
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    > My council claim it's a source of revenue, but then moan that they own the shops in the town This is widespread. A lot of councils (when they were complaining about central govt cuts, and threatening to cut vital services) actually bought into retail properties. I believe central govt put a stop to it but a lot of the damage has already been done. I read about a local council that got an opinion on a shopping centre, their consultant told them not to buy it, they did anyway...lost it all. Truly staggering levels of incompetence.
  - Gortal278 5y ago
    I would hardly call 4 pounds predatory
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    On the other hand my nearest reasonably sized town has free parking yet the department stores have still closed.
- hkt 5y ago
CodeGlitch 5y ago
> Local council planners mostly caused this, and the internet finished them off. The irony that every local council in England talks about 'saving the high street', without the self awareness that they caused the problem, and are still causing it. Many town centres are now full of cafes and restaurants. I think with a few "quirky" shops mixed in it can work out quite well. Ie going to the town centre is something you do at the weekend to enjoy a few hours out the house.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  There are some towns here in California where the town center has a bunch of restaurants, wine and brewery places, and antique stores. It's nice for tourists or for business lunches, but kind of dead for any other purpose.
hogFeast 5y ago
The US went through exactly the same phase after WW2: suburbanization, increase in car transport led to the death of single-location department stores which were concentrated in the city centre. This didn't occur in the UK because of better public transport, and less suburbanization (marginally). All of the stuff you say is correct but local councils, generally, didn't approve retail parks...they just couldn't find a good enough reason to say no or they were built just outside the council area. And now councils are reaping what they sowed because they stopped houses going up in cities...now the locus of money has moved to the suburbs as new houses get built (and, somewhat unbelievably, councils made this worse but shutting down car parking on high streets during Covid...the economic mismanagement is staggering...but all due to their greed around house prices and trying to restrict cars to boost house prices in the areas local councillors live). For a roadmap, look at the US after WW2 (we are somewhere in the 60s when independent department stores started failing en masse). We had department store chains built up in inner city areas so the collapse is, if anything, more violent. Most high street areas/shopping centres will fold, Debenhams was an anchor tenant in so many shopping centres. Tier 2 cities/towns high streets will be literally deserted in a few years. Most retailers that anchor shopping centres will fail (the big one that hasn't failed already is M&S, even Sainsbury's is vulnerable because I believe they anchor some small shopping centres), and you will see new chains thrive as retail parks spring up. I live near a town with under 10k people, they have put a retail park there with 4 stores, and before they all opened they added another two units. Aldi, Home Bargains, Food Warehouse...all fast growing chains offering products that undercut all the old economy shops. It is really great to see. A lot of these chains are offering real value. In the town I mentioned, it was only Tesco who was known for gouging in locations where they were the only shop in town. Now they are being overrun: Tesco, Sainsburys, Aldi, Home Bargains, Food Warehouse.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  These places do still exist in the US. They're typically pre-war suburbs where surrounding density is high enough to prevent box stores moving in.
- DrBazza 5y ago
  I think the problem with (UK) retail parks is that they're all large and chain owned units. My point is that not far from me there is a farm that chose to convert itself into a retail park of sorts. The tenants are limited by size, and the owners chose a couple of food places, a butchers, bakers, and grocers. All independents. Ironically everything a small town or village used to have. And business is roaring. There's clearly pent up demand for (perceived) quality and old-fashioned shops. I made a comment on another thread, but I think the UK planners should aim for this kind of thing, a smaller retail park with traditional (food) shops, not one massive supermarket. Basically almost a satellite 'village' around a typical town. I'd walk past a dozen Tescos for a decent butcher and baker where I live. Perhaps it's an age thing.
fy20 5y ago
When I was young the nearest town (my parents lived outside in a village) had a bustling high street and everything was in the town centre. You could go there and spend hours shopping in different places without issue. There were supermarkets, department stores (yes multiple), bakeries, butchers, toy stores, etc. This is a town with a population of 20,000, but the wider area it covers is easily 3-5x that. It was a small town though, so if you wanted something else you needed to go to the city (1.5 hours drive away). 20 years ago Tesco opened a new store outside the town centre, it's still quite small compared to some stores though, with very little non-food. A McDonalds opened outside the town on a main road, which was the final nail in the coffin for Wimpy. Other than that, not much has really changed. The town has expanded a lot, with lots of new housing being built (the population has gone up by around 25%) but no new retail parks have appeared. Today the town center is pretty much dead though. This started maybe a decade ago, a Starbucks opened and within a couple of years it shutdown. A few years later banks started closing or relocating to smaller units. This past year even charity shops closed down or relocated to industrial units outside the town centre. Business owners say the problem is the rent is too high. I'm not sure it's just that, but yeah, in the UK the high street seems dead today...
- dazc 5y ago
  I remember buying a toaster 20 odd years ago. I had to drive 5 miles to Currys, decide which of the dozen or so toasters on display would fulfil my needs, ask a salesman to get one for me and then suffer the hard sell on the benefits of an extended warranty before I could pay for it and return home. Buying a TV would be a similar experience but would involve visiting 3 or more stores to compare models/prices. The chances of returning home with a TV were slim though - at best it would be delivered a day or two later. Some things have improved at least.
dazc 5y ago
The problem with many town centres though is that they were never designed to accommodate a large volume of cars. Placating car drivers has the effect of alienating pedestrians so you lose either way.
tailspin2019 5y ago
Fellow Brit here and I mostly agree with this assessment. > The irony that every local council in England talks about 'saving the high street', without the self awareness that they caused the problem, and are still causing it. I'm not one to stick up for local councils (pretty much ever) but I think the writing was on the wall regardless of what they did. You're right that they started the demise of the town centre with everything you've outlined, but frankly the internet was the tidal wave that shortly followed and it really wouldn't have cared too much what local councils had done or not done. This shakeup was going to happen one way or another anyway. As we progress forwards, everything trends towards being commoditised. We automate, scale up, and what was once specialised is now general. The supply and retailing of goods used to be a much more specialised endeavour. Just owning a business (eg. small highstreet shop) which sourced goods from disparate suppliers and made those goods available for you to browse and purchase used to be a more specialist/niche pursuit. That's no longer the case. Almost all retail has been fully commoditised now, and retailers (particularly small shops in town centres) can no longer survive if they just think of themselves as "retailers". These businesses need to think "what is it that we provide to customers, _other_ than our physical goods?" And if you're in a competitive area (eg. book sales) - is the value that you're adding, on top of the baseline service of "commodity retail of books" enough to differentiate you from your competitors, both online and off? The mistake that some of the larger retailers have made, is that they've seen the efficiency benefits and economies of scale, and the commoditisation of their industry, and taken advantage of them aggressively, without realising that by doing so, they were slowly eating their own business model. I imagine that, in the panic of trying to compete with online retailers, a lot of big department stores have focussed too much on cutting costs and streamlining (in order to offset their rapidly falling profits) and not enough on actually changing/updating their model to add value to the customer experience in ways that online retailers cannot. A business like John Lewis needs to decide if they're in the commodities business or the customer experience business. If the former, then fine, outsource away, mass produce, cut your staff training costs, but then all you have is your baseline retail, which means you have to compete with EVERYONE else that sells the same things, and a chunk of those people just sell them online, without the overhead of physical stores. If you're in the "customer experience" business (which arguably any business that has a physical presence is to some degree), then you need to be very careful about the things you choose to streamline and cut costs on. Staff training and retention needs more focus. Additional value-add services need more focus (and not just bullshit low hanging fruit psuedo value-add, like "extended warranties"). The design of the physical environment itself needs more focus. There is a way to get people back into town centres. It does (in the UK at least) require some focus on infrastructure but it also needs the businesses that populate those town centres to become very clear about what their priorities need to be in order to attract customers and to provide something that their online counterparts can't. As a side-note, Apple stores have done particularly well over the years partly because the experience you get in them (and it's admittedly not always good) is totally unique. You literally cannot go to any other place on earth and get the same experience and service that you get from an Apple store. Now it's a bit of an unfair comparison to small high-street retailers - Apple have an advantage because they have such a tight control over their retail experience and their service/repair options (don't want to get into that debate) but the fact remains that Apple stores consistently still draw massive footfall because there are very specific and unique reasons for customers to go there. And they invest, heavily, in the training of their retail staff, the physical environment, and provide high value in-store services that are demonstrably worth the trip for their customers.

baybal2 5y ago

I found your answer very insightful. Did you research this professionally?

Veen 5y ago

> UK towns are historically car unfriendly What’s the alternative? Most town centres were planned in previous centuries. Councils can’t save the high street by tearing down the medieval streets and rebuilding them so they’re more like US cities. Besides, most towns have park and ride for precisely this reason.

DrBazza 5y ago
If I knew the alternative, I wouldn't be a keyboard expert on the subject :D In my part of SE England, there's 2 towns in the entire country that have park and ride. And it's hardly used. We genuinely need 'build new villages', rather than 'surround towns with bland housing estates and retail parks'. Until the UK local government town "planners" plan, the problem is here for decades.
- Veen 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree with that, but building new villages on greenbelt land is another highly contentious issue.
nine_zeros 5y ago
What about high rise (3 storey store with 3 storey parking) department stores in city/town centers? I've seen plenty of these in Asia
- cnorthwood 5y ago
  Building more parking doesn't solve the issue of congestion, it just makes it worse.
  - dazc 5y ago
    True, I used to have an office in small town centre with both cheap parking (£1.20 for 2 hours) and free parking (for 1 hour). The streets are gridlocked every day with people driving into the centre looking for an elusive 'free' space. Whenever I complained people would say it was necessary to bring trade into the town despite the fact that half the shops had already closed down.
- Animats 5y ago
  The original: "Parkington Shopping Center", Arlington, VA, 1951.[1] The first suburban mall with a multi-story parking garage. The mall has been replaced, but the parking structure lives on.[2] [1] https://arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org/2017/11/a-parkington-christmas/ https://arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org/2017/11/a-parkington-... [2] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Glebe+Rd/@38.87877572,-77.10929008,86.53742218a,0d,47.53014536y,288.03542167h,93.60470167t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/search/Glebe+Rd/@38.87877572,-7...
pharmakom 5y ago
The Netherlands shows how this stuff can be done. Unfortunately the UK is allergic to borrowing the best ideas from other countries. A grand NIH syndrome.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Could you elaborate on what The Netherlands does differently?
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    Some ways NL is different: - removal of parking spaces in urban centers (good luck doing that in the UK! People literally protest in the streets) - large scale secure bike parking in train stations - reliable and extensive rail network - segregated bike paths between major towns and on majority of urban routes - bike paths open to mobility assistance vehicles (independence for those too old to drive or with disabilities) - one way and access only streets for motor traffic, walking and cycling is allowed / two way - direct routes and bridges in urban areas reserved for walkers and cyclists, drivers must take long way around - school buses replaced with guided cycling and cycle busses for children - maintenance of cycle paths through winter (e.g. de-icing) All of this creates spaces where people want to spend time, as opposed to more transactional journeys to out of town stores. The outcome is bustling high streets, cafe culture, etc. Children have some of highest independence and happiness scores in the world. Lower obesity and diseases of inactivity compared to most of developed world.
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
      Hmm, very interesting. It seems the UK has a long way to go... I definitely agree that there is a lot we could learn from some of our European neighbours.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

London councils, with their predatory parking restrictions are helping to stifle the high street further.

DrBazza 5y ago
It's just the same out here in the shires. My local council charges something in the region of £4 for 2 hours. I say "something" because as you might guess, and from my parent comment, I have no reason to go into the town, and that's what I can remember from about 3 or 4 years ago! My council claim it's a source of revenue, but then moan that they own the shops in the town and no one is taking up leases. Local shop owners have begged the council to make the car parks free on a trial to see what happens, and the council's response was a) increase the parking fees, b) sell off a car park to a property developer who built an office block, c) sell off a second car park for some 'outdoor cafe culture' development with flats (because the UK is warm in the evenings all year round).
- hogFeast 5y ago
  > My council claim it's a source of revenue, but then moan that they own the shops in the town This is widespread. A lot of councils (when they were complaining about central govt cuts, and threatening to cut vital services) actually bought into retail properties. I believe central govt put a stop to it but a lot of the damage has already been done. I read about a local council that got an opinion on a shopping centre, their consultant told them not to buy it, they did anyway...lost it all. Truly staggering levels of incompetence.
- Gortal278 5y ago
  I would hardly call 4 pounds predatory
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  On the other hand my nearest reasonably sized town has free parking yet the department stores have still closed.
hkt 5y ago

CodeGlitch 5y ago

> Local council planners mostly caused this, and the internet finished them off. The irony that every local council in England talks about 'saving the high street', without the self awareness that they caused the problem, and are still causing it. Many town centres are now full of cafes and restaurants. I think with a few "quirky" shops mixed in it can work out quite well. Ie going to the town centre is something you do at the weekend to enjoy a few hours out the house.

nitwit005 5y ago
There are some towns here in California where the town center has a bunch of restaurants, wine and brewery places, and antique stores. It's nice for tourists or for business lunches, but kind of dead for any other purpose.

hogFeast 5y ago

The US went through exactly the same phase after WW2: suburbanization, increase in car transport led to the death of single-location department stores which were concentrated in the city centre. This didn't occur in the UK because of better public transport, and less suburbanization (marginally). All of the stuff you say is correct but local councils, generally, didn't approve retail parks...they just couldn't find a good enough reason to say no or they were built just outside the council area. And now councils are reaping what they sowed because they stopped houses going up in cities...now the locus of money has moved to the suburbs as new houses get built (and, somewhat unbelievably, councils made this worse but shutting down car parking on high streets during Covid...the economic mismanagement is staggering...but all due to their greed around house prices and trying to restrict cars to boost house prices in the areas local councillors live). For a roadmap, look at the US after WW2 (we are somewhere in the 60s when independent department stores started failing en masse). We had department store chains built up in inner city areas so the collapse is, if anything, more violent. Most high street areas/shopping centres will fold, Debenhams was an anchor tenant in so many shopping centres. Tier 2 cities/towns high streets will be literally deserted in a few years. Most retailers that anchor shopping centres will fail (the big one that hasn't failed already is M&S, even Sainsbury's is vulnerable because I believe they anchor some small shopping centres), and you will see new chains thrive as retail parks spring up. I live near a town with under 10k people, they have put a retail park there with 4 stores, and before they all opened they added another two units. Aldi, Home Bargains, Food Warehouse...all fast growing chains offering products that undercut all the old economy shops. It is really great to see. A lot of these chains are offering real value. In the town I mentioned, it was only Tesco who was known for gouging in locations where they were the only shop in town. Now they are being overrun: Tesco, Sainsburys, Aldi, Home Bargains, Food Warehouse.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
These places do still exist in the US. They're typically pre-war suburbs where surrounding density is high enough to prevent box stores moving in.
DrBazza 5y ago
I think the problem with (UK) retail parks is that they're all large and chain owned units. My point is that not far from me there is a farm that chose to convert itself into a retail park of sorts. The tenants are limited by size, and the owners chose a couple of food places, a butchers, bakers, and grocers. All independents. Ironically everything a small town or village used to have. And business is roaring. There's clearly pent up demand for (perceived) quality and old-fashioned shops. I made a comment on another thread, but I think the UK planners should aim for this kind of thing, a smaller retail park with traditional (food) shops, not one massive supermarket. Basically almost a satellite 'village' around a typical town. I'd walk past a dozen Tescos for a decent butcher and baker where I live. Perhaps it's an age thing.

fy20 5y ago

When I was young the nearest town (my parents lived outside in a village) had a bustling high street and everything was in the town centre. You could go there and spend hours shopping in different places without issue. There were supermarkets, department stores (yes multiple), bakeries, butchers, toy stores, etc. This is a town with a population of 20,000, but the wider area it covers is easily 3-5x that. It was a small town though, so if you wanted something else you needed to go to the city (1.5 hours drive away). 20 years ago Tesco opened a new store outside the town centre, it's still quite small compared to some stores though, with very little non-food. A McDonalds opened outside the town on a main road, which was the final nail in the coffin for Wimpy. Other than that, not much has really changed. The town has expanded a lot, with lots of new housing being built (the population has gone up by around 25%) but no new retail parks have appeared. Today the town center is pretty much dead though. This started maybe a decade ago, a Starbucks opened and within a couple of years it shutdown. A few years later banks started closing or relocating to smaller units. This past year even charity shops closed down or relocated to industrial units outside the town centre. Business owners say the problem is the rent is too high. I'm not sure it's just that, but yeah, in the UK the high street seems dead today...

dazc 5y ago
I remember buying a toaster 20 odd years ago. I had to drive 5 miles to Currys, decide which of the dozen or so toasters on display would fulfil my needs, ask a salesman to get one for me and then suffer the hard sell on the benefits of an extended warranty before I could pay for it and return home. Buying a TV would be a similar experience but would involve visiting 3 or more stores to compare models/prices. The chances of returning home with a TV were slim though - at best it would be delivered a day or two later. Some things have improved at least.

dazc 5y ago

The problem with many town centres though is that they were never designed to accommodate a large volume of cars. Placating car drivers has the effect of alienating pedestrians so you lose either way.

tailspin2019 5y ago

Fellow Brit here and I mostly agree with this assessment. > The irony that every local council in England talks about 'saving the high street', without the self awareness that they caused the problem, and are still causing it. I'm not one to stick up for local councils (pretty much ever) but I think the writing was on the wall regardless of what they did. You're right that they started the demise of the town centre with everything you've outlined, but frankly the internet was the tidal wave that shortly followed and it really wouldn't have cared too much what local councils had done or not done. This shakeup was going to happen one way or another anyway. As we progress forwards, everything trends towards being commoditised. We automate, scale up, and what was once specialised is now general. The supply and retailing of goods used to be a much more specialised endeavour. Just owning a business (eg. small highstreet shop) which sourced goods from disparate suppliers and made those goods available for you to browse and purchase used to be a more specialist/niche pursuit. That's no longer the case. Almost all retail has been fully commoditised now, and retailers (particularly small shops in town centres) can no longer survive if they just think of themselves as "retailers". These businesses need to think "what is it that we provide to customers, _other_ than our physical goods?" And if you're in a competitive area (eg. book sales) - is the value that you're adding, on top of the baseline service of "commodity retail of books" enough to differentiate you from your competitors, both online and off? The mistake that some of the larger retailers have made, is that they've seen the efficiency benefits and economies of scale, and the commoditisation of their industry, and taken advantage of them aggressively, without realising that by doing so, they were slowly eating their own business model. I imagine that, in the panic of trying to compete with online retailers, a lot of big department stores have focussed too much on cutting costs and streamlining (in order to offset their rapidly falling profits) and not enough on actually changing/updating their model to add value to the customer experience in ways that online retailers cannot. A business like John Lewis needs to decide if they're in the commodities business or the customer experience business. If the former, then fine, outsource away, mass produce, cut your staff training costs, but then all you have is your baseline retail, which means you have to compete with EVERYONE else that sells the same things, and a chunk of those people just sell them online, without the overhead of physical stores. If you're in the "customer experience" business (which arguably any business that has a physical presence is to some degree), then you need to be very careful about the things you choose to streamline and cut costs on. Staff training and retention needs more focus. Additional value-add services need more focus (and not just bullshit low hanging fruit psuedo value-add, like "extended warranties"). The design of the physical environment itself needs more focus. There is a way to get people back into town centres. It does (in the UK at least) require some focus on infrastructure but it also needs the businesses that populate those town centres to become very clear about what their priorities need to be in order to attract customers and to provide something that their online counterparts can't. As a side-note, Apple stores have done particularly well over the years partly because the experience you get in them (and it's admittedly not always good) is totally unique. You literally cannot go to any other place on earth and get the same experience and service that you get from an Apple store. Now it's a bit of an unfair comparison to small high-street retailers - Apple have an advantage because they have such a tight control over their retail experience and their service/repair options (don't want to get into that debate) but the fact remains that Apple stores consistently still draw massive footfall because there are very specific and unique reasons for customers to go there. And they invest, heavily, in the training of their retail staff, the physical environment, and provide high value in-store services that are demonstrably worth the trip for their customers.