Retail Centers Research Articles

Spatial morphology of an Australian high street: a century of retail change in Subiaco town centre

ABSTRACTThis paper describes an empirical case study of the Subiaco town centre in Western Australia. The research method employs geospatial mapping of archival and contemporary data sources to explore the town centre's changing spatial structure and high street morphology at the micro-scale over the past century. Once a thriving retail and business centre, Subiaco's (and possibly the state's), premier retail high street destination is now being compromised as the disruptive influence of online retailing gains further traction in the marketplace. Retail disruption provides the paper's conceptual foundation. Agents of disruption include the processes of creative destruction and innovation diffusion, which together with macro-economic factors help to explain the centre's evolution over time and space. The paper examines changes in the town centre's morphological character including residential gentrification, a growing dominance of fast food outlets, an overabundance of comparison stores and a more gendered offering in retail and personal services establishments. The paper also refers to the potential of the town centre to regain its past residential status as a means of fostering economic growth and renewal and suggests that this will only be achieved with radical intervention at the policy and planning level.

Towards a Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Attractiveness of Rail Transit-Oriented Shopping Mall Developments (TOSMDs)

Transit-oriented development (TOD) links residential, retail, commercial, and community service developments to frequent, accessible rail transit services to stimulate sustainable development in the form of decreased land use and transport integration. A mixed-use shopping mall can be developed as a TOD with moderate to high density with diverse land use patterns and well-connected street networks centred around and integrated with a rail transit station. Shopping mall developments are now considered as the retail, social, and community centres of their communities. Therefore, understanding their services’ mixed impact on nearby transit stations will provide further insight into the success of the TOD approach. As a result, this study aims to review and link the recent literature on attractiveness factors of shopping malls and the design factors of TOD and report the researchers’ analytic observations (themes) clarifying transit-oriented shopping mall developments’ (TOSMDs) attractiveness factors. The review systematically synthesises 208 guiding articles. It uses the elements of the extended service marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion, people, physical evidence, and process) and the five factors related to TODs (density, diversity, urban design, destination accessibility, and distance) as an indicator system for the factors determining the attractiveness of TOSMD. The review outcome is utilised to establish a conceptual framework for the attractiveness of rail TOSMDs. The study revealed fragmented causes of attractiveness factors of rail TOSMDs. It contributes to further understanding of TOD as it cross-reviews retail and urban design literature findings. The resultant conceptual framework will also inform and potentially enhance the existing rail transit station passenger forecasting models and increase the economic sustainability of rail transit networks.

Building Hierarchies of Retail Centers Using Bayesian Multilevel Models

The perceived quality of urban environments is intrinsically tied to the availability of desirable leisure and retail opportunities. In this article, we explore methodological approaches for deriving indicators that estimate the willingness to pay for retail and leisure services offered by retail centers. Most often, because the quality of urban environments cannot be qualified by a natural unit, the willingness to pay for an urban environment is explored through the lens of the residential housing market. Traditional approaches control for individual characteristics of houses, meaning that the remaining variation in the price can be unpacked and related to the availability of local amenities or, equivalently, the willingness to pay. In this article, we use similar motivations but exchange housing prices for residential properties with property taxes paid by nondomestic properties to glean hierarchies of retail centers. We outline the applied methodological steps that include very recent, nontrivial contributions from the literature to estimate these hierarchies and provide clear instructions for reproducing the methodology. Using the case study of England and Wales, we undertake a series of econometric experiments to rigorously assess retail center willingness to pay (RWTP) as a test of the methods reviewed. We build intuition toward our preferred specification, a Bayesian multilevel model, that accounts for the possibility of a spatial autoregressive process. Overall, the applied methodology describes a blueprint for building hierarchies of retail spaces and addresses the limited availability of spatial data that measure the economic and social value of retail centers. Key Words: econometrics, retail geography, spatial statistics.

Exploring the geography of retail success and decline: A case study of the Liverpool City Region

The retail economy has undergone a profound change over the past two decades. This is largely related to a number of competitive and economic shocks, in particular the rapid increase in online sales that has represented a profound change to the way consumer goods are bought and sold. As a result, many traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ retail businesses have perished, however, the degree of that decline varies geographically with some places being more resilient than others. In this study we examine the retail landscape in the Liverpool City Region where some startling examples of variability of experience can be identified. These vary extensively from notable success stories, such as Liverpool One shopping destination, to high streets which have become symbols of decline. As such this paper provides empirical evidence on economic health of the traditional retail spaces in the Liverpool City Region and identifies attributes that make some of the retail centres a viable proposition for the future. It also creates a conceptual typology of the sub-regional retail centres linking their economic performance to a success or failure in strategic positioning of a particular centre. Implications of our findings to the city region are also discuss and placed in a wider national policy context, in particular the outdated ‘town centre first’ approach.

Agri-food supply chains with stochastic demands: A multi-period inventory routing problem with perishable products

This paper considers an agri-food supply chain with a single fresh food supplier, who owns a central warehouse that serves several retail centers. Retail centers carry a certain amount of inventory of the fresh product, which is prone to deterioration. The supplier makes both inventory and routing decisions to minimize the inventory, transportation, food-waste, and stock-out costs in the face of stochastic customer demand and perishable products that need to be delivered to each retail center. This inventory routing problem is known as perishable inventory routing problem (PIRP) with stochastic demands in the literature. We model it using a mixed integer program and propose a simheuristic algorithm, which integrates Monte Carlo simulation within an iterated local search, to solve it. Our experiments show that the proposed algorithm can improve the initial solution with reasonable computational times. The resulting procedure is easy to implement and is applicable to other domains where a multi-period PIRP with stochastic demands may appear.

Beyond retail: New ways of classifying UK shopping and consumption spaces

Early attempts to classify shopping activity often took a relatively simple approach, largely driven by the lack of reliable data beyond fascia name and retail outlet counts by centre. There seems to be a consensus amongst contemporary scholars, commercial research consultancies and retailers that more comprehensive classifications would generate better-informed debate on changes in the urban economic landscape, as well as providing the basis for a more effective comparison of retail centres across time and space, particularly given the availability of new data sources and techniques and in the context of the transformational changes presently affecting the retail sector. This paper seeks to demonstrate the interrelationship between supply and demand for retailing services by integrating newly available data sources within a rigorously specified classification methodology. This in turn provides new insight into the multidimensional and dynamic taxonomy of consumption spaces within Great Britain. First, such a contribution is significant in that it moves debate within the literature past simple linear scaling of retail centre function to a more nuanced understanding of multiple functional forms; and second, in that it provides a nationally comparative and dynamic framework through which the evolution of retail structures can be evaluated. Using non-hierarchical clustering techniques, the results are presented in the form of a two-tier classification with 5 distinctive ‘coarse’ clusters and 15 more detailed and nested sub-clusters. The paper concludes that more nuanced and dynamic classifications of this kind can help deliver more effective insights into changing role of retailing and consumer services in urban areas across space and through time and will have implications for a variety of stakeholders.

Effect of Temperature on Acrylamide in Potato (Solanum Tuberosum) Chips

In the recent past scientists in Britain, Sweden and South Africa have discovered that the process of cooking starchy foods under high temperatures produces acrylamide in those foods. Fried products including potato chips and crisps have been reported to contain high levels of acrylamide, a potential carcinogenic and neurotoxic substance of great concern to consumers. Samples were purposefully obtained from some retail outlets in Kisii County in the most visited hotels and retail centers. The effect of temperature was analysed using Time–temperature data which were acquired after every second using a digital multimeter and later analytically prepared before analysis to avoid contamination and also to ease the analytical procedure before they were injected to the High Performance Liquid Chromatography for analysis. Both descriptive and inferential statistical tests including analysis of variance (ANOVA) and least significant difference test (LSD) for the variables were carried out using the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) version 9.1.3.

Contesting brandscapes in Hong Kong: Exploring youth activist experiences of the contemporary consumerist landscape

Since the 2000s, Hong Kong has become inundated with retail centres, such that the territory is now known as ‘Mall City’, a condition now problematised by youth activists in the city. This article is interested in why these youths take issue with this form of urban development. By tracing the emergence of the contemporary consumerist landscape from the colonial era to the present, it is shown that the current manifestation and characteristics of Hong Kong’s brandscapes are the product of unequal power dynamics between the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, estate developers and the Hong Kong citizenry in shaping the city. By bringing youth activist voices to the forefront through the use of ethnographic data, the discussion then examines youth activist accounts detailing the experiential dimensions of living in this consumerist landscape, noting the feelings of alienation and exploitation circulating within the vernacular domains of Hong Kong society. The article concludes by reviewing the different ways these youths have attempted to reconfigure their relationship with this brandscape, and thus challenge the control the HKSAR government and estate developers have over Hong Kong urban space.

Place Innovative Synergies for City Center Attractiveness: A Matter of Experiencing Retail and Retailing Experiences

By investigating the occurrence of place innovative synergies between retail and tourism in a small-sized Swedish city, this article advances knowledge on how city center attractiveness can be enforced in a rural context with competing online shopping and suburban/out-of-town shopping centers. Previous studies of city center attractiveness, place innovation, and social innovation help distinguish innovative intertwinement of correlated trends of experiencing retail and retailing experiences, augmenting customer experiences through place-based characteristics. Interviews, workshops, and participatory observations with entrepreneurs, business promoters, and municipality representatives reveal three dimensions of place innovative synergies in city center attractiveness: 1) innovative variance in city center retail and tourism, 2) innovative interwovenness between the city center identity and its configuration, content, and communication, and 3) innovative interaction between retailers and tourism entrepreneurs in city center events. A key question is whether synergies in temporal events and everyday commerce are sufficiently combined, in order to engender encompassing renewal.

Consumer Customs Analysis Using the Association Rule and Apriori Algorithm for Determining Sales Strategies in Retail Central

The sustainability of a company will not be separated from the role of consumers in conducting transactions. In fact, a consumer has different behaviour and character, therefore as a company owner must be able to analyze the patterns or habits of consumers in making transactions. This also happens in the retail center X, which has problems in the sales process, such as products running out of stock and unsold products and the most popular products and products that are not in demand by consumers. Therefore we need an analysis of consumer habits in conducting transactions. The method of association rule with Apriori algorithm is able to be applied well in the analysis of the habits of consumer transactions in the central retail X. The results of the calculation obtained an average percentage of the value of support 33%-40% and the value of confidence 43%-80%. The results of applying the association rule method with Apriori algorithm can help recommend central retail X owners in structuring product and determine strategic steps in increasing sales, such as providing discounts or promos for certain products.

Effects of outdoor seating spaces on sociability in public retail environments

Seating is an important contributor to the social effectiveness of public spaces, due to its ability to support stay activities. This paper focuses on the contributions seating makes to sociability in Queen Street Mall in Brisbane, a public space where limited qualitative assessment has been conducted on seating use and social behaviour. Assessments were made on the sociability of Queen Street Mall through initial observations, online surveys and secondary observations. Common findings across all research methods suggest that the design of Queen Street Mall prioritises pedestrian movement pathways in the interest of adjacent retail centres, creating an environment that struggles to encourage social behaviour. To improve the social use of this space, seating environments should be redesigned to prioritise prolonged outdoor stay activity and increased provisions for shading and sheltering should be provided. Given the impending growth of the Brisbane population, it is important that public spaces in Queen Street Mall are designed to best serve an increasing number of local visitors.

The Imperatives of Beneficiation Law for Botswana’s Diamond Mining Industry and Its Implications for Foreign Investment Protection

This article seeks to interrogate the advantages and disadvantages of beneficiation law for Botswana’s mining industry and its implications for foreign investment protection. Furthermore, it argues that the enactment of beneficiation law could stimulate economic growth and development in Botswana. On a proper analysis of the potential of beneficiation law it seems plain that it may facilitate the integration, of among others, the cutting and polishing segments through the backward and forward linkages in the entire diamond value chain to move Botswana diamond industry a step further as a new and emerging jewellery manufacturing and retail center in order to derive maximum returns from the rough diamond production. Quite clearly, cutting and polishing of diamonds in Botswana is bound to promote employment which in turn will promote demand for goods and services that would have a positive impact on economic growth in Botswana.  The paper concludes that on a balance, the opportunities accruable from the enactment of this law far outweigh the downsides and will not in any way scare investors away as some have perceived it.

ESTUDIO DE FACTIBILIDAD PARA INVERTIR EN UNA PLANTA COMERCIALIZADORA DE MERMELADAS DE BABACO

The objective of this research is to analyze the feasibility to invest a marketing plant of babaco’s marmalade, an investment project. To reach, a survey was made to 338 jam retail centers. The results showed that 70% of them are willing to buy the babaco jam, due to the lack of diversity of flavors. In addition, a technical study proved the parish of San Jose de Poalo is the suitable place for the production plant. It estimated an initial investment of $ 380.617.50. The results indicate an internal rate of return of 36% higher than the minimum acceptable rate of return of 9.79%, the net present value is more than zero and the cost benefit ratio reveals a benefit of 0.65 dollars for each dollar invested It means the project is accepted, feasible and profitable.

FACTORS INFLUENCING FOOD & GROCERY PURCHASE DECISIONS IN INDIA

ABSTRACT Food & Grocery Retail in INDIA is different from the food and grocery retail in developed economies because of two key and unique factors. First availability of the ubiquitous mom and pop stores called the Kirana stores in local parlance almost everywhere and second very large & diverse populace with multifarious requirements. The Indian food and grocery consumers can purchase their needs from the Kirana stores, or visit organized retail centre like D-Mart, Sahakari Bhandar, or order on-line from e-commerce food and grocery businesses like Amazon Now, Flipkart, Grofers, etc. Besides the options listed above, options like Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, mobile food & grocery vendors, weekly haats (markets), wholesale markets offer many purchasing options. The government controlled public distribution system (PDS) for the supply of essential commodities to below the poverty line Indian consumers can also be an option. The question that arises is that from the many options available to the Indian consumer what option would be the preferred option? We also investigate in this paper whether impulsive buying due to periodic promotions could affects the buying pattern of the consumer. Finally we investigate the impact of the buying alternatives on the planned purchases for the periodic requirement of essential commodities. A total of 144 samples were collected from Mumbai and Mumbai metropolitan areas using a 7 point interval scale varying from “Least in Agreement” to”Most in Agreement”. Factor analysis, Reliability Test, Correlation Analysis were performed using the Statistical Process in Social Sciences (SPSS ) to show the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The results showed that the factors correlated with the general confusion and lack of clarity displayed by the consumers while purchasing food and grocery items on a regular basis. Keywords Customer Preferences, E-commerce, Food & Grocery Retail, mobile apps, Online retail, periodic purchases.

The Agglomeration of Bankruptcy

This paper identifies a new channel through which bankrupt firms impose negative externalities on non-bankrupt peers. The bankruptcy and liquidation of a retail chain weakens the economies of agglomeration in any given local area, reducing the attractiveness of retail centers for remaining stores leading to contagion of financial distress. We find that companies with greater geographic exposure to bankrupt retailers are more likely to close stores in affected areas. We further show that the effect of these externalities on non-bankrupt peers is higher when the affected stores are smaller and are operated by firms with poor financial health.

A comparison of consumer perception towards organized and unorganized retailing in South Gujarat

The Indian retail industry is one of the most vibrant industries in the country. The retailing sector in India is one of the pillars of its economy and accounts for 14 to 15 per cent of its GDP. The Indian retail market is estimated to be US$ 500 billion and one of the top five retail markets in the world by economic value. But despite this growth, the Indian retail industry is highly fragmented, with the organized retailing still at a nascent stage which accounts for far less percentage than the unorganized retailing of the total Indian retail market. It is estimated that organized retailing accounts for less than 5 per cent of today’s market. Retailing in India came with evolutionary pattern form unorganised retail store to organised retail store. The global retail industry has been growing at a brisk pace the last few decades. At present sales from the different modern retail centre is higher than unorganised retail store, sales from the organised retail store is more than 45 per cent higher than sales from unorganised retail store. This study aims to find the consumer perception towards organized and unorganized retailing in South Gujarat. The primary data was gathered by administering a prearranged questionnaire with 200 consumers selected purposively from Surat and Valsad city of South Gujarat. The data analysis of consumer attitude towards unorganized and organized retailers shows that there is a difference between the consumers’ perception towards both organized retailers and unorganized retailers regarding the shopping environment, promotional schemes, choice/variety of brands, proper parking facility, proper shelf display of the products etc.

Performance within a recession: The converging trajectories of retail centres in the UK

AbstractUsing retail‐centre aggregated microeconomic data for over 65,000 retail and service units in the UK, we explore the differential influence of the 2007/8 economic recession on the performance of retail centres. For the first time in the context on town centre/high street analyses of performance, we employ growth and convergence models to examine whether centres with different vacancy rates in the pre‐recession period converged in the recession period that followed. The results indicate that the recession had higher negative influence on those centres that experienced lower retail vacancy rates in the pre‐recession period, leading to convergence in retail vacancy rates. Despite the negative effect of recession in the UK retail market, the results show that there were some retail centres which were resilient to the effects of recession. Finally, there is evidence that the location and the size of retail centres moderate the convergence path.

Os Desafios da Construção da Legitimidade do Empreendedor Institucional no Processo de Revitalização de Polos Varejistas de Ruas

Os polos varejistas de rua sofreram forte interferência com as mudanças de mercado, contribuindo para seu processo de declínio. Projetos de revitalização são formas de reverter esse processo. No entanto, o contexto brasileiro não apresenta um modelo legitimado e institucionalizado que permita o desenvolvimento do processo de revitalização. Percebe-se que movimentos iniciais para o processo de revitalização podem surgir espontaneamente pelos varejistas ou estes são convocados por instituições externas ao polo para atuarem como empreendedores institucionais. Para trilhar na revitalização, o empreendedor institucional varejista (EIV) necessita construir a sua legitimidade entre seus pares e posteriormente com o campo externo ao polo. Nesse sentido, esta pesquisa apresenta como objetivo central descrever e explicar o processo de construção da legitimidade do EIV entre seus pares e posteriormente como estes atuam de forma gradual para construir legitimidade do polo varejista no campo institucional. Para responder o objetivo, este artigo aplicou o estudo de caso múltiplo com oito polos varejistas espalhados pelo Brasil. Os resultados mostraram que mesmo apresentando um projeto estruturado, com benefícios coletivos e com propósito de elevar atratividade local, esses elementos não foram suficientes para garantirem a construção da legitimidade do EIVs.

Waste Management in Labrador and Northern Communities: Opportunities and Challenges

The Northern Review 47 (2018): 79–112This article discusses the origin and management of waste in two Labrador communities, Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Nain and results from the qualitative phase of a two-stage mixed methods research study. Results illuminate challenges and opportunities associated with waste management in northern communities. Like many regions across the Canadian North, the principal study area consists of a population centre surrounded by diffuse, rural, and Indigenous communities, multiple land uses, and complex governance considerations. We identify factors contributing to the accrual, management, and transport of solid waste in Labrador related to historical and ongoing colonialism. Among the consideration are military development and mobile labour forces that generate both industrial and household waste. A combination of remoteness and climate makes waste collection, storage, and transport costly and slows organic waste decomposition. Corrosion from municipally treated water generates excessive appliance waste. Limited local food production and remoteness from manufacturing and retail centres increase the consumption of disposable shipping materials. Despite these challenges, it is essential to simultaneously recognize the efforts of local grassroots initiatives to effectuate sustainable waste management. We conclude that communities may benefit from implementing synergistic waste management strategies to reduce costs and public health risks, and to concurrently recognize the practicalities of waste management in the North. Results of the qualitative research phase led to the selection of a priority waste stream, black spruce biomass cleared for the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam project, for an economic study in the project’s quantitative research phase.

Assessing food system vulnerabilities: a fault tree modeling approach

BackgroundFood system function is vulnerable to disruption from a variety of sources. Disruption of the processes required for food provision may result in decreases in food security in affected communities. Currently, there are few tools that quantitatively predict or analyze food system vulnerabilities to contribute to food system resilience analysis. This work presents a prototype version of one such tool, a fault tree, which can be used conceptually and for future modeling work. Fault tree analysis is an engineering tool used to illustrate basic and intermediate factors that can cause overall system failures.MethodsThe fault tree defines food system functioning as food security at the community level and maps the components of the food system onto three main tenets of food security – accessibility, availability, and acceptability. Subtrees were populated using a top down approach guided by expertise, extant literature, and 36 stakeholder interviews.ResultsThe food system is complex, requiring 12 subtrees to elaborate potential failures. Subtrees comprising accessibility include physical accessibility of the vending point and economic accessibility among community members. Food availability depends on the functioning of the food supply chain, or, in the case of individuals who rely on donated food, the food donation system. The food supply chain includes processing, wholesale operations, distribution systems, and retail center subtrees. Elements of acceptability include the medical appropriateness, nutritional adequacy, and cultural acceptability of food. Case studies of the effects of Winter Storm Jonas of 2016 and the 2013–2017 California drought in Baltimore City illustrate the utility of the fault tree model.ConclusionFTA of potential routes to food system failure provides a tool that allows for consideration of the entirety of the food system; has potential to provide a quantitative assessment of food system failure and recovery; and is able to capture short-term and long-term hazards in a single framework. This systems modeling approach highlights an extensive list of vulnerability points throughout the food system, and underscores the message that reducing food system vulnerabilities requires action at all levels to protect communities from the risks of short-term and long-term threats to food security.