Retail Store Location and Market Analysis: A Review of the Research

Most research and writing in the area of retail store location and market analysis has been undertaken by marketing researchers and urban geographers. The purposes of this review are to present this eclectic area of study as a unified body of knowledge, to encourage real estate researchers to become more involved in this area, and to indicate where recent research in real estate and urban economics is an outgrowth of study in this area. The field can be viewed as a hierarchy of investigations, including modeling consumer behavior at the micro level, using models of consumer behavior in models of store location, and developing approaches for choosing among markets at the macro level. The hierarchy of investigations should in turn be viewed as the study of economic activity in space. Recent research in the areas of allocation of space in shopping centers and price discrimination in retail leasing is an outgrowth of work in the area of retail store location and market analysis.