Brick & mortar still competitive with online sales

Mainland shopping malls are shrugging off the impact of e-commerce and recovering strongly on the back of healthy retail sales, DBS says.

Shopping malls hit headwinds in 2014 and 2015 as brick-and-mortar stores took a hit from the e-commerce boom and luxury-item sales declined.

Figures from DBS Vickers, the securities arm of Singapore-headquartered multinational bank DBS, show retail sales at the top 50 mainland retailers dropped 7 percent year-on-year as of August, 2014.