A HYPOTHESIS FOR THE STRUCTURE OF RETAIL TRADE AREA

Abstract

When the structure of activities of Retailing Business is comprehended as a regional phenomenon, it is usually approached by means of the analyses of its inner factors and outer fluctuating factors. In this article we shall attempt a dynamic approach to the latter.As one of the factors forming the Retail Trade Area, purchasing faculty was taken up and, to make it easy for us to compare, it was replaced by a purchasing rate and a purchasing faculty index. And on the bases of the data of the market survey which we made, according to the method of logical analyses from the standpoint of market geography, in Chigusadai Apartment Region in Nagoya City, in the groups of companies' houses in Yokkaichi City, and in the new city regions of Hanta City, Kasugai City and Ichinomiya City, we attempted the analyses of the purchasing rate and the purchasing faculty index, under the indexes such as income and occupations as social, economic conditions and the distance from a market as a geographical condition.As the result, the Retail Trade Area can be roughly divided into three zones, and its structure can be diagramed, with the distance or social economic index shown on the axis of ordinates and the purchasing rate on the axis of abscinassa. There can be seen an acute angled triangle, an epuilateral triangle, a pyramid, a cylinder or an upside-down pyramid. These shapes represent the structures of retail trade of the market, the department store and the specialty store one by one. And the commercial managing agency representing no model of trade area proves to be agency which has not settled its own trade area yet.In the diagram of the purchasing faculty index of final consumers classified by occupations, the salaried classed represent the highest structure. So we can realize that the most influential factor for the structure of consuming market is the salaried classes.The convenience goods and shopping goods represent the difference of social, economic, regional change in the distribution of purchasing rate. As for the convenience goods, the shopping chain relation of trade area between two cities competiting trade area can not be seen, but, as for the shopping goods, it can be seen.