The Specifics of the Retail Network and Consumer Shopping Behaviour in Selected Regional Towns of West Slovakia

Abstract

The turbulent last decade of the twentieth century marked the retail trade of the Central and Eastern European cities with a significant transformation not only in the spatial organizational structure, but also in the prospects for its functioning. The urban network of retail facilities has undergone a development that can be described as the most spatially variable, based on a change of ownership in the industry, which in the 90s of the last century moved from a centrally managed to a market system, creating a highly competitive environment. The paper focuses on certainly the most visible aspects of the post-socialist development of the city of Central and Eastern Europe, which include spatial organizational changes, interrelationships between the retail sector and urban structures and the consumer behaviour of their inhabitants.The aim of the scientific monograph chapter is to answer the basic research questions based on a detailed analysis of spatial changes and functional differentiation of the retail network of western Slovakia three regional cities—Trnava, Nitra and Žilina. To what extent are these cities moving towards a market-oriented city and losing their retail characteristics of the socialist period? There are the determinants of the expected onset of the new so-called the saturated stage resulting from the slowly flowing “purification” of the retail network from surplus sales area? Its initial manifestations were identified in the city of Nitra as early as 2012. The authors of the scientific monograph have answered these questions and the new configuration of these cities retail system by means of the area parameter indicator the Population to the Admissible Floor Space (PAFS). Another research question was whether, under the influence of new socio-economic conditions, there is a change in the purchasing behaviour of customers. To obtain an answer to this question, a behavioural survey was used in the most attractive shopping centres of the given regional cities. In Nitra, they include OC Galéria OC Mlyny and OC Centro, in Trnava—OC City Aréna, OC Galéria, ZOC Max and in Žilina—OC Aupark and OC Mirage. On the basis of chi-square analysis, the authors of the scientific monograph chapter have tested the relationship between the demographic characteristics of the respondents (gender, generation, household income, number of children in the household, employment status) and individual types of modern and traditional shopping behaviour in these shopping centres. According to the respondents, the above-mentioned shopping centres are suitably located. In the shopping behaviour of their customers, there is a change in modern shopping behaviour, which prevails over traditional. Testing has shown that demographic characteristics have an impact on consumer types of customers. The rate of this effect is low and slightly low.