Stakeholders' Preferences and Adaptive Behaviour in Retail-Location Choice Decisions

Abstract

The changing role of urban planning in the Netherlands from regulatory to public-private development planning implies the need to gain insight into multistakeholder decision making in a spatial planning context. In this paper we show the importance of unravelling influence structures that affect individual stakeholder decisions. For this purpose we looked at the Dutch retail planning context, where recently the responsibility for planning decisions has been deputed to local governments and peripheral retail planning restrictions have been relaxed. As a result, at present, local governments, realestate developers, and retail firms jointly decide on the location of new retail facilities. It is assumed that each stakeholder's attitude towards peripheral retail planning is influenced by the preference structures of other stakeholders and may reflect their professional background. We focus on adaptive behaviour, the phenomenon that a decision maker adjusts his or her preferences towards specific preferences of other stakeholders in order to move to consensus. We provide a method for measuring this adaptive behaviour, based on existing random utility choice modelling techniques. To assess preferences of stakeholders for peripheral retail planning options as well as their adaptive behaviour, three groups of stakeholders (real-estate developers, retail organizations, and local governments) were invited to take part in a web-based conjoint choice experiment. It was found that all stakeholders show rather conservative behaviour regarding peripheral retail development, especially with respect to fashion. Adaptive behaviour appeared to be cooperative and significant: stakeholders tend to (temporarily) increase preferences for alternative plans preferred by the other stakeholders. Developers appeared to be the most adaptive in their decision behaviour. Taking into consideration adaptive behaviour may help to improve existing multistakeholder decision models.

Beyond retail: New ways of classifying UK shopping and consumption spaces

“…Our results serve to corroborate the academic argument that the traditional urban hierarchy of retail systems, driven by ‘central place theory’, is of limited contemporary utility. This is consistent with Jones (2017) and Jansen et al. (2014), who argue that regional dominance of the major UK comparison retail hubs is now constrained by the existence of large out of town retail developments.…”

“…Our results serve to corroborate the academic argument that the traditional urban hierarchy of retail systems, driven by 'central place theory', is of limited contemporary utility. This is consistent with Jones (2017) and Jansen et al (2014), who argue that regional dominance of the major UK comparison retail hubs is now constrained by the existence of large out of town retail developments. In our typology the split within the broader cluster 3 (Leading comparison and leisure destinations) was mainly driven by the attributes related to affluence of an area rather than the distance between centres, or the spatial dispersion of demand (Parr, 2017).…”

“…On the one hand, retail presence within town and city centres has become increasingly combined with other uses such as services and leisure activities (Wrigley and Lambiri, 2015), and on the other, the expansion of online retailing is causing a net loss of demand for some forms of retail floorspace and a change in function for others, thus requiring traditional retailers to rethink their business models and the role of physical space within those models. Unquestionably, these effects vary geographically with different location and type of retail areas exhibiting diverse demand patterns (Birkin et al., 2017; Jansen et al., 2014; Singleton et al., 2016). The results of this research can be applied to identify and monitor the appropriateness of particular urban environments for new investments or, given the competition from online shopping, to bring intelligent, analytical rigour to the decisions that might need to be made to rationalise existing store portfolios and distribution networks for branch-based businesses.…”

“…This assumption was driven by assumption that retail centres were ‘naturally’ nested for functional reasons within a hierarchical network of local retail centres (NPPF, 2012). There is still a view that different orders of shopping and non-shopping activities exist and that these can be associated with a particular centre’s anticipated level of vitality and viability, its resilience to economic and competitive shocks or retailer’s locational preferences (Jansen et al., 2014; Reynolds and Schiller, 1992; Wrigley and Dolega, 2011).…”

Assessing the principles of spatial competition between stores within a retail network

“…Lastly, during the development of new retail agglomerations, it is vital to predict its impact on local consumer behavior in order to assess the continued viability of neighboring retail agglomerations (Janssen, Borgers, & Timmermans, 2014;Thomas & Bromley, 2003). In this light, this study allows for a detailed, store-based assessment of the cannibalizing effects on neighboring retail agglomerations, especially when retailers are already involved in the planning stage of such new retail agglomerations.…”