Matthew Bailey – The Conversation

A department store employee wheels clothes across Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall on August 5 2020, as retailers prepared to close their doors to customers. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/AP

August 26, 2020

Trouble at the mall as landlords and tenants ponder mutually assured destruction

Matthew Bailey, Macquarie University

The COVID-19 crisis is stretching long strained relations between shopping centre landlords and tenants to breaking point.

Westfield Burwood circa 1999, a year before being demolished to make way for a new Westfield building. Wikimedia Commons (unknown author)

December 13, 2017

Westfield’s history tracks the rise of the Australian shopping centre and shows what’s to come

Louise Grimmer, University of Tasmania and Matthew Bailey, Macquarie University

The fact that Westfield’s founders are moving out of physical store development to invest in innovative retail technology shows what’s to come in Australian retail.

Once proud, department stores are just a shell of their former selves. Rousel Studios. Collection: Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

October 29, 2017

History says department stores will struggle in the future

Matthew Bailey, Macquarie University

Department stores created many of the familiar aspects of modern retailing, from off-the rack clothing to loyalty cards. But much of their business has been taken by others.

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