Shopping surveys for retail research

Abstract

Several commentators have expressed concern over the methods used by the retail sector in the UK in deciding on the location and scale of future developments. Most firms appear simply to react to development opportunities as they arise, or make decisions on the basis of ‘hunch’. Very little statistical information is used to assist them. One reason for this must be that forecasting methods and factual information available are frequently quite inadequate to permit of reliable judgments about the performance of new stores in specified locations. This reflects not only the lack of retail turnover statistics at local level, but also the lack of detailed information about the routine shopping behaviour of representative samples of the population. In recent years there has been very little applied general research into shopping behaviour in the UK; consequently very little is known about many of its aspects, particularly those factors which influence and motivate people's choice of store for their everyday shopping trips. In this article the authors have a positive objective; after discussing existing sources of information they describe a new and potentially valuable source — the Cardiff shopping diary survey, which they themselves carried out in the first half of 1982. Finally, they deal with some ways in which the results of this survey can be put to practical use by retail organisations.