Rethinking the commercial space of Parisian railway stations: Toward a hybrid ecosystem

Tokyo, Saint Pancras, Atocha, Gare Montparnasse... Railway stations are being transformed into commercial spaces, which are contributing to the strong growth of the Travel Retail sector (Xerfi, 2018). Representing one third of sales in transit areas, they are growth drivers for retailers, sources of revenue up to five times more efficient than shopping malls (Gaillard and Marton, 2018). Considered consumption spaces, transit areas are the subject of multidisciplinary research in sociology, geography and marketing (Bergadaà, 2009; Capo, 2015; Dang Vu and Jeaneau, 2008). Nevertheless, to our knowledge no retail research has focused on the railway station as an ecosystem─ conducive to new modes of consumption via smartphone ─ combining mobility and ubiquity called mobiquity1 by Schierz et al. (2010). Our research echoes the calls for research about transformation of public spaces in marketplaces (Castilhos and Dolbec, 2018). Framed by business ecosystem literature, and nourished by ethnographic data collection through observation and interviews with various stakeholders, this work aims firstly to characterize a hybridization between a travel-oriented ecosystem and a consumption-oriented ecosystem within the newly refurbished Parisian railway stations, and secondly to understand if, and how, connected travellers become consumers by interacting with this ecosystem.