Pedestrian Volume and Built Environmental Factors on Sales of Convenience Stores, Cosmetic Shops and Coffee Shops in Seoul

Abstract

Large pedestrian volumes and better pedestrian environments would positively effect retail business. Most retail shops want to follow bigger pedestrian volume, but just some of them could get the best location under bid rent competition and/or their own unique demands. Different retail shops would enjoy diverse characteristics of built environments, and have dissimilar relationship to pedestrian volume. Previous literatures have tried to find built environmental factors which influence the sales of retail shops; on mostly convenience stores and at specific districts. This study built the in-depth data set of the location factors and the transaction amount of a credit card company on convenience stores, cosmetic shops, and coffee shops in the whole Seoul city, not in a district of a street. It analyze the relationship between the three retail shops and the possible factors including demographical, economic, land use, location, and accessibility. Building coverage ratio, floor area ratio, residential and commercial land use mix, public transportation accessibility, and number of similar retail shops effect the sales of the three retail shops. Pedestrian volume positively affect the sales of convenience stores and coffee shops, except of cosmetic shops. These results would help the developers as well as planners to locate such shops for community and districts.