Application of network Huff model for commercial network planning at suburban – Taking Wujin district, Changzhou as a case

Abstract

Three issues of applying Huff Model to predict the service area and potential customer pool in Wujin district's commercial networks are analysed and addressed: (1) the distance variable D in Huff Model can either be defined by customer's Euclidean distance, network distance or network time to the commercial circles, and the three approaches have generated very different results in Wujin's case. The differences could be attributed to a traffic infrastructure in the district; (2) the distance decay parameter λ requires either regression or empirical data to estimate. In this paper, several empirical parameters are examined, and it is further proposed that this parameter can be adapted to a fluctuating parameter if the re-modification of Huff model is adopted; and (3) traditional Huff Model was appeared to be over restrictive in Wujin's application because it could only be applied to commercial circles of same scales, and in this paper, a possible re-modification method of predicting the service area and potential customer pool for the different scale commercial circles (Wujin and Changzhou's business circles) are tested. Additionally, a zoning geometry method to analyse the re-modified models’ validation is illustrated.