TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF RETAIL NETWORKS OF UKRAINE IN THE CONDITIONS OF WAR (EXAMPLE OF «SILPO-FOOD» LLC)

Abstract

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 had a significant impact on thework of the largest domestic food retail chains, whose trade facilities were forced to relocate, especiallyin the southeastern regions of the country. The purpose of the study is to analyze the transformationprocesses of the development of the territorial organization of the regional chain of supermarkets«Silpo-food» LLC, as one of the leading food operators in the country, in the conditions of a full-scalemilitary intervention of the aggressor country. To achieve the goal, the author summarized the maintrends and challenges for the operation of the objects of this network in the complex conditions of socioeconomicdevelopment, determined the potentially possible total amount of financial losses for the lostsupermarkets of the operator in the temporarily occupied territories of Donbass and Prydniprovya, andrevealed a quantitative representation of new retail locations of the network opened regionally during2022–23. It was found that from April to December 2022, the «Silpo» chain opened 8 new supermarketswith a total retail area of 10.6 thousand m2, mainly in regional and sub-regional centers of Kyiv and Lviv regions. In 2023, the operator continued active regional expansion by opening 11 new retail outlets(15.2 thousand m2) in the western and central regions, increasing their quantitative representation inthe network to 312 supermarkets. At the same time, our calculations showed that the total sales area forthe lost supermarkets of the chain in the above-mentioned temporarily occupied territories was about25.2 thousand m2, and the potentially possible total volume of turnover obtained by these enterprises in2022, under the condition of their usual mode of operation in peacetime time would amount to no lessthan UAH 3.7 billion.