Analysis of user impressions of railway stations, focusing on the effects of adjunct retail facilities

Abstract

This paper examines the cognitive structure of the impressions that users have of railway stations and quantifies the effect of different types of adjunct stores on the cognitive structure. The results offer some fundamental insights for developing more effective policies and promotion strategies. User feelings of Tokyo’s largest railway terminals were gathered by means of a questionnaire. Overall impressions of the stations were then extracted suing factor analysis A structural equation model (SEM) was applied to see how stores affect the user’s impressions of stations as well as to quantify the impact of the stores and the differences in the users’ socio-economic characteristics. The results suggest that railway users have three types of impressions about stations: convenience, when a station is mainly considered a transport facility; pleasure, when a station is mainly considered a place of communication or leisure; and crowded, which concerns the station’s layout and atmosphere. Different types of stores produced different impressions. Clothing stores enhanced the impression of pleasure, while food & beverage stores enhanced the impression of convenience. The revealed shopping behavior data confirmed that these latent variables affect the railway user’s choice of shopping destinations.