Retail Centers Research Articles

Shopping Behavior under the Rapidly Changing Retail Environment of Shanghai

Though faced with the Asian currency crisis in 90's, China keeps the high economic growth rate. In Shanghai, the most modernized region in China, many urban redevelopment projects are under way. They include the Pudong district, which is famous for its newly developed huge New Town with a city center of skyscrapers, and many urban renewal programs at the old city center area near Nanjing Road, which has been recently renovated as the pedestrian walkway with colored tiled pavement. Many parts of Shanghai, whether they are new or old, are drastically changing their physical figures.On the other hand, retail business categories such as convenience store, supermarket, and hypermarket, which are new for China, have emerged and spread out rapidly. In fact, the first convenience store opened just three years ago, but now more than 1, 000 convenience stores are running. Consumers in Shanghai have adapted to these rapidly changing retail environments. It is no exaggeration to say that the future spatial structure of urban retail system will hinge on the course of the changes of consumer behaviors.Few studies, however, have been carried out to empirically clarify the actual behavior of consumers at urban China. With this in mind, for the first time we have conducted two surveys on consumer behaviors in Shanghai. One is the on-site survey on consumer shop-around behavior at the city center retail environment near Nanjing Road and the other the home-based diary survey on shopping behavior of consumers at suburban residential areas.Based on the latter diary survey, this paper tries to clarify the characteristics of consumer's shopping behaviors. We first classify shopping destinations into three categories: neighborhood shopping street, suburban shopping center, and central commercial district. Then we analyze how consumers allocate their shopping trips and expenditure among these three categories.Using above micro-data of consumer's behavior, we have shown that the central commercial district is characterized by less frequent with high expense shopping behavior and the neighborhood shopping street by high frequent with less expense shopping behavior. We also have shown that the difference of the age and income of consumers leads to different allocation patterns of shopping trip and expenditure among three destinations. In particular, we have shown that the shopping behavior of the age group of lOs to 20s is quite different from other age groups above 30 since they are much oriented to central commercial district in contrast to the other age groups oriented to neighborhood shopping street.

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 This article presents a model based on gravitation theory to anticipate inter-regional purchasing-power flows in the retail sector, and demonstrates how this model may be applied empirically by considering the example provided by the county of Mettmann. Unlike previous forecasting models, this model makes it possible to dispense with setting an arbitrary maximum size for catchment areas. It also enables all of the bilateral purchasing-power flows between a large number of towns or regions, and the key factors influencing them, to be investigated simultaneously. The empirical findings for the county of Mettmann appear extremely plausible. The author discusses three possible areas of application for this forecasting model: to gauge the effectiveness of city-marketing measures; to assess the effects of large (e.g. out-of-town) retail centres; and to predict the impacts of improvements to the road network on retailing in both source and target localities. The results produced by the model are in some cases surprising; the model is, however, capable of providing good explanations for these surprises.
 
 
 
 
 

Use of a Community Program to Increase Seat Belt Use Among Shopping Center Patrons in Charlotte, North Carolina

A community program was implemented at one mall and two shopping centers in Charlotte, North Carolina, to increase patron seat belt use in the context of an ongoing statewide seat belt law enforcement program, “Click It or Ticket.” The program consisted of feedback signs at mall and shopping center exits displaying patron seat belt use rates, posters providing information about the benefits (number of lives and amount of money saved) of the “Click It or Ticket” program and urging patrons to use their seat belts and check seat belt use rate information posted at mall exits, as well as flyers providing similar information as the posters. Following a baseline period, the program was implemented at Carolina Place Mall, whereas the other two retail centers remained in the baseline condition. The program then was introduced at Matthews Festival Center, followed by Town Center Plaza. Seat belt use among drivers increased significantly from a range of 73–74% to 83–85% at all three sites following introduction of the program. Belt use among right front passengers also increased, but this change was statistically significant at only one of the three sites. Resumption of the statewide “Click It or Ticket” enforcement program was not associated with further increases in seat belt use.

The Consistent OD Estimation for On-Site Person Trip Survey

We have conducted series of surveys on consumer's shop-around behavior at city center retail environment (CCRE) of Fukuoka City for the purpose to create the more attractive CCRE from the viewpoint of consumer's behavior. The survey on consumer's shop-around behavior at CCRE is conducted as follows. At several sampling points (shops) chosen, samples are randomly selected from visitors at these sampling points to record their shop-around history, the sequence of shops visited, purposes done and expenditure spent there in the order of their occurrence. This is just to collect the shopping trip chain data by on-site sampling. In other words, it is simply the on-site person trip survey, which is a striking contrast to the traditional person trip survey by home-based sampling.However, as Saito, Kakoi, and Nakashima (2000) first indicated, there occurs the choice-based bias if on-site trip chain data from different sampling points are pooled to be used to estimate OD pattern. The purpose of this paper is to address this problem to formulate a new theoretical method for consistent estimation of OD pattern based on on-site trip chain data and to establish a theoretical foundation for on-site person trip survey.

An Opportunity Cost Approach to Valuation of the River in a City Center Retail Environment

These days many cities in Japan are confronted with the problem of decline of city center retail environment due to motorization and location of large shopping centers at suburban area. This problem aroused the awareness that the loss of city center retail environment (CCRE) means the loss of the prerequisite of subsistence of city. Thus many cities have launched redevelopment projects to revitalize their CCRE. With this in mind, we already have proposed an evaluative framework for assessing the spatial structure of CCRE based on consumers' shop-around behaviors. Furthermore, a frequency-based shop-around Markov model was constructed to forecast how redevelopment projects at CCRE would change consumers' shop-around patterns and what changes in retail sales would follow.On the other hand, evaluating public projects in terms of money has been attracting serious concerns recently. This is required from harnessing exploding public investments, consciousness with environmental consequences of public projects, and so on. Thus much discussion has been made on valuation methods of environmental resources such as CVM (contingent valuation method), travel cost method, user benefit method, hedonic approach etc.While CCRE revitalization projects often accompanies improvement of natural environments such as parks and rivers, few research has been carried out to evaluate them in terms of money. In this paper, we aim to extend the above Markov model to valuation of the natural environment such as river at CCRE. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to propose an opportunity cost method for valuation of natural resources at CCRE based on consumers' shop-around behavior with its actual application to the Murasaki River at CCRE of Kitakyushu City.At the CCRE of Kitakyushu City, the Murasaki River flows from south to north dividing the CCRE into east and west. Apparently, the existence of the Murasaki River decreases consumers' shop-around between east and west so that retail turnover at each side decreases. Using the above model, we have estimated the total annual amount of the decrease of retail turnovers, which is the loss of sales that would have been obtained if it were not the Murasaki River. Thus it is the opportunity cost retailers are paying annually. To change the viewpoint, this can be regarded as willingness-to-pay that retailers are willing to spend every year for leaving the Murasaki River as it is. Hence if it is discounted, we can obtain the asset value of the Murasaki River. This paper has done this.

Economic Impacts of the Downtown One-Dollar Circuit Bus Estimated from Consumer's Shop-Around Behavior

NNR (Nishi-Nippon Railroad Co. Ltd.) introduced the downtown one-dollar circuit bus in Fukuoka City, Japan in July 1999. NNR first announced that it was an experiment until March 2000 while it could be continued as a business after the experimentation period if its operation record would pass the given criteria of profitability. Surprisingly, during past 8 months, the downtown one-dollar bus has attracted over 1.8 times as many customers as before. NNR has decided to keep on running the downtown one-dollar bus as a business from April 2000. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the economic impact of the downtown one-dollar bus at city center retail environment of Fukuoka City based on data obtained from surveys on consumer's shop-around behavior conducted in March 2000.

Process Variation as a Determinant of Bank Performance: Evidence from the Retail Banking Study

This paper explores the relation between retail banks' branch-based processes and financial performance. There are 11 processes included in this study, which represent the bulk of the activities performed in a typical retail branch (e.g., opening checking accounts). The first finding of this study is that the financial performance of banks that perform better across these processes tend to be better than that of other banks. In addition to the variation in process performance across banks, there is also substantial variation across processes within banks. That is, banks that performed well in one process often performed quite badly in another. We present an analytical model that shows that improvement in process variation can be more important than improvement in aggregate process performance when dealing with certain customer segments. Empirical evidence from the Wharton Financial Institution Center Retail Banking Study of bank holding companies in the United States provides support.

Trade-Area Models and Choice-Based Samples: Methods

The use of choice-based data to generate parameters of a trade-area gravity model is described in detail in this paper. The importance of being able to estimate parameters with data collected from individuals who have selected a particular alternative is explained. The main advantage of the new method is that it allows the efficient use of easily collected data. It also allows inferences to be made about the distance-decay rates and attraction parameters, even when only a small subset of stores is sampled from an area. This new version of the retail gravity model has been tested extensively with data for 6 major retail centers in Dallas. The detailed studies include a demonstration of the conventional approaches to trade-area mapping and an explanation of exactly what is different about the method proposed here. Interpretation of the model results indicates areas where a store either gains an unexpectedly high (or low) share of its sales. These methods have immediate application in screening potential locations because the variables used to run the model are generic and easily gathered for other cases. The results also encourage the rethinking of the Huff-based gravity model.

The Garvey Retail Center Case: Redeveloping an Inner-city Site

The Garvey Retail Center Case: Redeveloping an Inner-city Site

A cross-sectional model of rents in urban retail centres

This paper sets out to assess the underlying influences on urban retail rents. A cross-sectional model of retail rents is developed and tested for 29 Scottish towns in 1989 using regression analysis. A series of specific variables are constructed for these towns partly by reference to a gravity submodel. The model attempts to assess the relative significance of demand in the form of local turnover and supply constraints, and demonstrate the role of business rates in the determination of urban retail rents. The results reveal the dominant influence of demand/turnover on local urban rents. The analysis also shows, through the improved explanatory power of the regression model incorporating business rates, the role of the rent surplus theory in the determination of rents. Finally, the retail stock at the margin is also found to be a significant, if minor factor, in the determination of urban rents. There are difficulties in interpreting this in cross-sectional analysis, but it does, at least, indicate that development constraints mean that supply does not necessarily adjust to demand.

La mobilité des consommateurs et les nouveaux espaces commerciaux

Consumers' Mobility and new Retail Outlets The evolution in shoppers' mobility is the crux of the matter. What we mean by proximity is slowly changing. There is an ever-increasing gap between retail shopping and homes and it shows that relations between the supply and domestic sectors are being completely transformed. A less clearly outlined retail shopping is taking over from the sharp dichotomy which exists between the town and out-of-town centres, each one specialising in its own specific branch. The city centre retail outlets are on the defensive and are constantly losing their market share to retail parks situated on the outskirts. More and more families have cars, even two cars, more and more women work, families are increasing moving to house situated outside the town or on the outskirts ; all these factors lead to a greater mobility among shoppers ; it could even be called a peregrination within the area, and is linked to other reasons for travelling.

Joint Inverse Estimation of Consumers' Entry and Shop-Around Pattern among Shopping Sites in a City Center Retail Environment

Joint Inverse Estimation of Consumers' Entry and Shop-Around Pattern among Shopping Sites in a City Center Retail Environment

The development of Park and Ride in Scotland

The provision of Park and Ride services is one of the principal means of addressing problems caused by traffic congestion in urban areas. Bus-based Park and Ride schemes are intended to attract motorists from outside an urban area to park at a peripherally located car park and travel by bus to the town centre. A number of local authorities in Scotland have been developing such schemes. These will introduce a new form of land use on the fringe of Scotland's towns and cities. In addition, the provision of Park and Ride is also likely to influence the catchment areas of retail and tourist centres and the residential location of employees in towns thus served.

Marion: A study of a super‐regional centre and its impact on Adelaide

Adelaide has experienced major change in the scale of regional centre retailing in its southern suburbs with the completion in 1997 of the $200m Westfield Shoppingtown, the Marion Centre. This paper focuses on whether the expansion should have proceeded and its repercussions.

Small Business Entrepreneurship in the High Technology Services Sector: An Assessment for the Edge Cities of the U.S. National Capital Region

The Washington D.C., National Capital Region is surrounded by a series of edge cities. These edge cities developed rapidly in the 1980s and are tied to extensive commercial and retail centers within the larger urban field. Economically they focus on the delivery of high technology information-oriented services and are populated by small and medium sized firms. The region has been recently titled "The Capital Netplex" because of its concentration on advanced information network technologies. An examination of the intra-regional differential associated with firm size, start up rates and industrial composition is evaluated. An assessment of the economic impact of the Netplex firms on the regional economy and selected policy issues are examined.

Miracle on Sixth Avenue: Information Externalities and Search

After a long dormant period, Lower Sixth Avenue in New York has undergone a rapid revitalisation. We show that a simple search theoretic model with information spillovers can explain both the period of underuse and the rapid turnaround. The model reduces to a simple equation, which allows us to do comparative statics on the duration of vacancies. We show how the solution reacts to changes in market structure and changes in search technology. The model is suggestive of difficulties that may occur in many markets in which there are changes over time in the optimal use of resources. At one time Lower Sixth Avenue was one of the most fashionable retail centres in Manhattan, but the area collapsed as a retail centre when the affluent moved further uptown and to the suburbs. Today, Sixth Avenue is in the midst of a rapid turnaround, as reported in the Sunday New York Times by Claudia

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On-site Poisson Regression Modeling for Forecasting the Number of Visitors to City Center Retail Environment and Its Evaluation

This paper proposes two types of on-site Poisson regression models to forecast the number of visitors to city center retail environment that correct the choice-based bias due to on-site sampling. One is the modified on-site weighted Poisson regression model and the other the truncated on-site weighted Poisson regression model. While the previous weighted Poisson regression model is formulated to require additional information not obtained from on-site survey, the novelty in these two models is in our proposed method that makes them estimable without any extra information other than on-site survey. We have applied these two models to the actual case of Fukuoka City and evaluated the accuracy of parameter estimates in comparison with those obtained from the usual Poisson regression model based on exogenous sampling data. The major findings are as follows: First, three explanatory variables are strongly significant to account for the number of visitors to the city center. They are the time distance from home to city center, the shop floor area both at city center (destination) and at residential area (origin). Second, the values of parameter estimates obtained from the modified on-site weighted Poisson regression model are accurate enough to be within the range of one standard deviation of those parameters obtained from the usual Poisson model based on exogenous sampling. With these results, the on-site Poisson regression modeling is shown to be an effective and promising method for forecasting the number of visitors to city center retail environment.

Understanding Store Development Programmes in Post-Property-Crisis UK Food Retailing

This paper contrasts conflicting interpretations of the UK food store development process in the late 1990s. In particular, an attempt is made to unpack critical dimensions of the debate which surrounds the Department of the Environment's Planning Policy Guidance Notes 6 and 13 and the so-called ‘Gummer effect’ which is seen as having actively discouraged green-field out-of-town development and provided a mandate for reinvestment in town centre retail development. By exploring new evidence on the changing economics of superstore development, the impact of tightened land-use planning regulation, and shifting patterns of capital investment, I provide a conceptual framework in which to understand a radically transformed retail development picture.

Identifying the Effect of City Center Retail Redevelopment on Consumer's Shop-around Behavior: An Empirical Study on Structural Changes of City Center at Fukuoka City

At the city center of Fukuoka City, a core city of Northern part of Kyushu island in Japan, large-scale retail developments have completed one after another within two years of 1996 to 1998. They include openings of two new department stores and one new large commercial complex, and one enlargement of shop-floor area of an existing department. As a result, the total increase of shop-floor area becomes 13.4 ha. If restricted to the central commercial district of “Tenjin”, the total shop-floor space of the department stores has drastically been expanded to 2.7 times the previous one. Such a rush of large-scale retail developments is quite a rare event. Thus the case of Fukuoka City gives a valuable occasion to investigate the effect of redevelopment on the structure of city center since, to our knowledge, few empirical research has been carried out to identify the effect of redevelopment based on a behavioristic standpoint.This study has conducted three on-site surveys on consumer's shop-around behavior before and after the actual developments at the city center of Fukuoka, and identified their effect on the structure of city center as the change of consumer's shop-around behavior between retail establishments using Markov shop-around model.