Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
by, or for, all groups in society (for example, they
would still be valuable in a social justice
framework for assessing the impacts of planning
applications made by the powerful multiple
retailers on accessibility and welfare for different
consumer groups). Second, the use of (descriptive)
models does not and should not preclude
explanation—having suggested an optimal
location, there is an obvious need to justify that
decision and to analyse the expected impacts.
Lastly, although models such as spatial interaction
models can be linked to CPT (cf. Wilson 1978),
they are deliberately preferred to CPT because
they are not bound by the limiting assumptions
made by CPT concerning uniform population
distribution and nearest centre choice hypotheses.
However, there is good news! The modelling
community is fighting back. It is fair to say that
important lessons were learned during the years
in the wilderness, which has enabled the new
generation of GIS and spatial modellers to be
better equipped to handle the second era, an era
characterised by better theoretical models and
more widely available data sets and, consequently,
in tune with a more applied operational
environment. The early success of this new era of
applied modelling at the University of Leeds
encouraged the university to form a consultancy
company (GMAP) in 1987, which by 1996 was
turning over £5 million per annum and
employing over 100 geography graduates (mainly
from Leeds of course!). [Its rapid growth inevitably
attracted predators, and two-thirds of the company
was sold to the American marketing company
Polk in 1997.] The speed and extent of this
development is a result of the ever-growing
demand for geographical analysis. Despite the
critiques of the 'radical' geographers, location
problems never went away in the business world.
The discipline of operational research, and to some
extent computing, filled the gaps that geographers
had left in the search for radicalism (for example
the growth of GIS was driven entirely by
computer scientists in its early days). The success
of companies like GMAP (and a number of
'regional research laboratories' that have also had
success; see Clarke
et al
. 1995) are testimony to the
fightback undertaken by quantitative geographers.
But why do businesses require such techniques to
help them to run their operations? The aim of the
rest of this chapter is to answer that question by
focusing on the need for geographical research
and the principal methods available to retailers to
analyse their markets geographically.
FINDING CUSTOMERS AND
LOCATING STORES
For any organisation that sells directly to the
general public, geography is important. First is the
need to find customers. For mail order companies,
this exercise may be sufficient in its own right. For
most other retail organisations, a second
requirement is the need to locate stores in such a
way that these customers can be reached and sales
subsequently captured. To add to the complexity,
these search procedures are taking place in an
increasingly competitive retail environment (see
Clarke and Clarke 1998). For most products,
customer profiling and segmentation are
important. The grocery market provides a good
illustration. All households in the UK require
groceries. However, the market can be segmented
geographically. The lowest-income groups (along
with those with low mobility such as householders
without a car, mothers with young children and
old age pensioners) are most likely to use (or need)
discount stores, where price may be a more
important store attribute than quality or choice.
Therefore, if you were a market analyst for Kwik
Save, Netto or Aldi you would be interested in
finding where such customers lived and shopped.
Given the social geography of most UK industrial
cities, it is not surprising to find these stores
concentrated in great numbers in the inner areas
of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and
Newcastle (see Wrigley and Clarke 1999). On the
other hand, companies like Sainsbury and Tesco
have more commonly targeted the higher-income
groups, who are more prepared to travel longer
distances to enjoy quality and choice, which is the
hallmark of these two organisations. Their market
domination of the south and southeast of the UK
