CONSUMER TRAVEL PATTERNS AND THE CONCEPT OF RANGE1

ABSTRACT An aspect of Central Place Theory—the range of a good—is examined for a variety of business centers within a city. The study is concerned with understanding the orderliness of consumer spatial behavior. Specifically two hypotheses are tested. One, that consumers purchase goods and services at the nearest centers offering these goods and services. Two, that there is not a significant difference in the distances travelled for the same good or service from different sizes of centers. The results of the tests emphasize that less than half of the sample of consumers examined go to the nearest center, and that consumers do travel significantly greater distances to the central business district and to larger centers. It is suggested that the nearest center hypothesis and the concept of range require modification to take into account the fact that consumers do travel farther than is essential to purchase goods and services.