AN ANALYSIS OF SHOPPERS’ WALKING BEHAVIOUR BY USING GIS Lilian, S.C. Pun-Cheng a , Alice, W.C. Chu b a Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics b Institute of Textiles and Clothing The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong a lspun@polyu.edu.hk, b tcchuwc@polyu.edu.hk Commission TP-PS: Working Group II/5 KEY WORDS: GIS, Application, Decision Support, Pattern, Spatial, Observations ABSTRACT: GIS applications in the commercial sector have by large been concentrated on location query, optimal product routing and distribution. There is a scarcity of research and implementation of the geo-information technology on consumer behavior, which is decisive to a business set up. Fashion retailing is one type of businesses that relies heavily on the walking behavior of consumers. Retailers are often concerned with a truly profitable location for their stores, which simply means a location with a high pedestrian flow. A shopping plaza is an ideal testing place for consumers as most people are going there for shopping. With the construction of many large shopping plazas worldwide in recent years and especially in dense urban cities, it is interesting and beneficial to know why some locations are frequently visited or passed by shoppers. This paper presents an investigation in modeling the routing pattern of fashion shoppers in two multi-storey shopping plazas in Hong Kong. The walking routes of shoppers within the plazas are recorded and stored in a GIS package. First, a general walking pattern that reflects frequently visited routes can be derived. Second, by correlating the pattern with a set of environmental or spatial variables and with non-spatial variables like degree of familiarity, demographic factors, shoppers’ preferences and in particular their habitual walking patterns can be more thoroughly concluded. With these research findings, fashion retailers can be more assured in locating their stores and be able to weigh, more accurately, their investments in relation to expected benefits. The findings will be extremely useful for business marketing, especially in the decision making about store locations for the fashion retailers. 1. INTRODUCTION Fashion retailing represents a large business in Hong Kong. Retailers are often concerned with a truly profitable location for their stores, especially when land rent is so high in this highly urbanized commercial city. With the construction of many large shopping plazas in recent years, many retailers receive long lists of vacant stores from the land developer everyday. For retailers’ consideration, the different store locations will greatly affect their sales performance even if these locations are on the same level inside the same plaza. Retailers who select a good location enhance the chances of success because it allows greater flexibility in developing their product, price and promotion mix. There are indeed many factors affecting retail location selection (including fashion stores) such as the cost of land / rent, tenant-mix strategy, the competing and complimentary effects due to space allocation in the shopping centers (Brueckner, 1993), the store composition, the pedestrian traffic and flow, the size and accessibility. However, very few of these studies are analyzed or correlated with the routing pattern of shoppers. For instance, stores of high rental value are assumed to be more accessible with high pedestrian flow; but little investigation has been made as to how and why these shoppers follow a certain pattern or route, their visit intention, effect of plaza layout on profits, and so on, not at least in a quantifiable way. This study therefore aims at modeling the routing pattern of a particular group of multi-storey plaza shoppers by identifying a set of environmental or spatial variables, correlating them with non-spatial ones like frequency of passing-by, degree of familiarity. In this way, a set of attractive and repulsive variables might be identified, weighted and derived for gravity models of accessibility. Factors considered are those specific to fashion retailing in this study. With the use of geographical information technology and networking models, these parameters are quantified and a routing model is established to represent shoppers’ habitual walking pattern within the studied plazas. This is a new research direction in commercial GIS and the findings will be extremely useful for business marketing, especially in the decision making about store locations for the textile and clothing industry. It is hoped that the method can be applied universally for visits to all other shopping centers, so that fashion retailers will benefit in making their decisions on store location, as well as developers in the plaza layout design. Concerning geo-information system, the technology has always been considered as an effective tool in uncovering and analyzing patterns that involve a multiplicity of factors and voluminous data. However, the technology is often, at least for Hong Kong’s case, only applied in areas like construction engineering, environmental science and land development. It is seldom mentioned in commercial fields in which a good decision support system is equally as important. Recently, there are examples of applying geographic information systems (GIS) in cake shop businesses and real estate. Yet, neither is it widely applied nor popular in the commercial fields. In fact, the technology has the potential of promoting business with the following decision making capabilities: