Can Store Location Research Be a Science?

Abstract

T nHE earliest attempts in the United States to employ in evaluating sites for stores date back about a half century ago. These early attempts, made in behalf of retail chain store firms, tried to determine the relative value of one site, compared with other sites, in the same business area. The pioneer studies were centered on volume, composition, and quality of pedestrian traffic, and on the probability of converting part of this traffic into store customers. Presumably chain tobacco shops were the first to make such traffic studies. Later, a similar approach but using automobile traffic studies was introduced for evaluating sites for gasoline stations. Pedestrian and automobile traffic studies continue to serve a useful role in store location research. The next advance in store location research and still the most important to date had its start a little over three decades ago. The credit for this belongs to several leading grocery chain store firms. The major thrust of the research during this second stage focused on empirical studies of store trading areas and on the market share which a store secured from its trading area. In the search to understand these phenomena, the studies employed marketing geography, statistics, economics, and behavioral science disciplines.