Alibaba’s new retail
From Friedman’s Spatial City to the programmatic superpositions of Freshippo supermarkets
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17979/bac.2025.15..12264Keywords:
new retail, supermarkets, economy of the experience, sincronization, Yona FriedmanAbstract
The increasing digitalisation of retail has contrasted in recent years with the analogue nature of supermarkets, especially in China. While the open attitude toward data collection of the Asian country favours digital activity, the tradition of sensory neighbourhood shopping has hindered the sector from taking advantage of technology, with the exception of Freshippo: Alibaba’s supermarket chain. Its unique programmatic composition includes a distribution centre and a robot restaurant, incorporating a mobile application that seeks to reconcile the best of physical and digital commerce. This architecture seems to share with Friedman's Spatial City the technique of programmatic superposition as a way to synchronize its rhythms with those of the visitor. Its digital ancestry might lead one to think that it is Alibaba's technology that is restoring the supermarket, but quite on the contrary, this article reveals that it is the physical architecture, as the material display of the food, that serves as the ultimate tool for online sales.
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