Geography and Retailing

Peter Scott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780202309460
• eBook ISBN: 9781351517713
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

An important contribution to our understanding of the distribution of retail activities, particularly within cities, this book provides a critical review of the literature on the subject. It points out the major general propositions concerning retailing from the geographical point of view, and identifies key research problems, which need to be examined in order to push forward the frontiers of this sub field of economic geography. It presents a major critique of the central-place model, which has come to hold an important place in the methodology of economic geography, and clearly and decisively shows the model to be static, deterministic, retrospective and of little value for predictive purposes.

1

RETAIL GEOGRAPHY AND CENTRAL-PLACE STUDIES

In Western countries retail distribution is an important sector of the national economy. In Britain, for example, retail sales account for more than one-half of total consumer expenditure, and the retail trade employs as many as one in every ten insured workers, or more than twice the work force engaged in the primary industries of agriculture, fisheries, and forestry. Although total employment in retailing is less than one-third that in manufacturing, retailing as measured by employment is the largest single industry in many British towns. As the level per capita of real income rises the role of distribution in the national economy tends to increase.

Yet despite its economic importance retail distribution has remained until recently a comparatively neglected field of academic enquiry. In his pioneer study on the economics of retailing Henry Smith (1937, p. I)¹ commented that because retail trade appears to the English to contain an essential element of unworthiness, a blend of the sinister and the ridiculous, economists had generally preferred to concern themselves with subjects of which the titles carried a more dignified and scholarly connotation. He might well have added that this scholarly predilection was shared by other social scientists as well, notably by geographers and sociologists; certainly in subsequent years such predilection was more evident among geographers than among economists. The next quarter of a century saw some notable advances both in the theory of retailing and in empirical economic enquiry but the few contributions that were made to our understanding of retail location and the spatial manifestations of the retail sector in Britain came mainly and perforce from town planners. Only of late have geographers, at least in Britain, paid much attention to the spatial analysis of retailing.

In recent years, however, the concern of geographers with central-place theory has added considerably to our knowledge of spatial retail patterns. Christaller’s classic study Die zentralen Orte in Siiddeutschland, published at Jena in 1933 and first brought to the attention of English-speaking scholars by Ullman (1941), has aroused such widespread interest that the book has been translated into English (Baskin, 1958; Christaller, 1966) and has stimulated a substantial literature on central places (Berry and Pred, 1961, 1965). In the course of these developments the concepts advanced by Christaller have been modified, extended, and verified. Yet even so the central-place model cannot be readily reconciled with our knowledge of retail location derived from economic theory and from the behaviour of both consumers and entrepreneurs.

One reason for this stems from the more embracing scope of central-place theory which relates not only to retailing but to all tertiary activity. Christaller’s starting-point is that an urban centre, whether town or hamlet, exists primarily to provide goods and services for the surrounding area. Such services are termed ‘central functions’ and the service centres providing them are ‘central places’. A central place will locate at the centre of minimum aggregate travel. Given uniformly distributed purchasing power and expenditure patterns and given equal accessibility from all points the ‘complementary region’ would be hexagonal in shape. Shops located in central places would also have hexagonal market areas.

It follows that the larger the centre, the more extensive will be the market area and the greater the specialisation in service provision. Thus a larger centre will have more establishments and business types, offer more goods and services, and do greater volumes of business than a smaller centre. Small centres generally provide only goods such as foodstuffs which are purchased frequently with minimum consumer travel. Establishments retailing such goods have relatively low conditions of entry. On the other hand, large centres provide not only the low-order goods but also higher-order goods bought less frequently and for which shoppers will travel longer distances. Establishments retailing these goods have greater conditions of entry. Moreover, the larger the centre, the greater will be the specialisation possible. Since shoppers in large centres can buy both low-order and high-order goods, shops selling low-order goods located in large centres will have larger market areas than shops of the same type located in smaller centres.

Christaller also held that central places and therefore shopping centres comprise a hierarchy made up of discrete groups of centres. Shopping centres of each higher order provide all the goods and services provided by lower-order centres together with a discrete group of higher-order functions. As a result the market areas of the lower-order centres nest within the market areas of the higher-order centres. Given uniform distribution of purchasing power the precise pattern depends on three principles. If the system is determined by maximum accessibility to the market the number of centres follows a rule of threes: that is, the number of centres in each group from highest to lowest order follows a sequence of 1, 2, 6, 18, 54, etc. If the system is determined by a transport or traffic principle the patterns are linear and nesting follows a rule of fours. If the system derives from an administrative principle the hierarchy exhibits a rule of sevens.

Much controversy concerning Christaller’s contribution has focussed on the hierarchical concept. Lôsch (1954), who confirmed many aspects, notably the hexagon as the most advantageous shape for market areas, demonstrated that the three principles are but special cases drawn from a series of possible solutions. The administrative principle, for example, could be met by a rule of thirteens. He concluded that a complete regional system embodies an optimum combination of all principles. Accordingly centres of similar size do not necessarily perform the same functions ; centres need not necessarily be larger, the greater the size of their market areas ; centres if ranked by size may under certain circumstances appear to be a continuum; and market areas may vary sufficiently in size as to preclude a nesting pattern characteristic of Christaller’s system. In the Lôschian system consumer movement is again minimised and no firm can earn excess profits.

Subsequently Berry and Garrison (1958b, c) reformulated central-place theory in terms of ‘threshold’ and ‘range’, which together enable a hierarchical structure to be developed without the assumption of uniformly distributed purchasing power basic to the arrangement of hexagonal market areas. Christaller (1966, p. 22) defined the ‘range of a good’ as ‘the farthest distance the dispersed population is willing to go in order to buy a good offered at a place’. This limit is determined by spatial competition among the centres supplying the same good ; beyond this limit a centre can no longer supply the good. The range also has a ‘lower limit’ (Christaller, p. 54) which is determined by what Berry and Garrison have called the good’s ‘threshold’. They define ‘threshold’ as the minimum amount of purchasing power necessary to support the supply of a good from a centre. Given only the concepts of threshold and range they maintain that a central-place hierarchy will emerge whatever the distribution of purchasing power and whether in rural regions or within a conurbation. These concepts no longer require the notion of no excess profits.

Other theoretical presentation has given prominence to the concept of a continuum. Vining (1955) contended that empirical studies of central places have used arbitrary criteria to define groups of centres and to delimit market areas. He regarded the classification of centres into discrete groups according to their functions as merely a convenient mode of expression. However, Beckmann (1958) demonstrated that by introducing a random variable the Christaller formulation invariably yields a continuous rank-size distribution. Thomas (1961; cf. Bunge, 1962, p. 147) even attempted to reformulate central-place theory in such a way as to remove its dependency on ‘typical’ size classes.

Yet on balance the weight of empirical evidence embodied in numerous studies from widely separated areas of the world asserts the validity of the hierarchical concept (Berry and Pred, 1961, p. 6). However arbitrary or sophisticated the categorisation might be, shopping centres within most of the regions so far studied have tended to exhibit a stepped hierarchical spatial arrangement in which there is an increasing number of centres in successively lower orders. But as we shall see in later chapters, whether a hierarchy or a continuum is discernible depends to some extent on the size of the universe : the larger the universe, the greater the probability that central places will constitute a continuum.

Some of the findings of empirical research that have been held to be at variance with central-place theory would seem to accord, at least in part, with the conclusions of Lbsch. In a study of metropolitan Boston, Schell (1964) found that higher-order centres are not necessarily more complex in function than lower-order centres, that increased functional complexity is not always accompanied by an increase in the size of market areas, and market areas need not necessarily form a nesting hierarchical pattern. Similarly Johnston (1966) found that even though metropolitan Melbourne contains a hierarchical system of shopping centres there are marked areal variations in the relative proportions of each class of centre. Kenyon (1967) even concludes that in the State of Georgia there is scant evidence of discrete size groupings. All of these findings would seem to be susceptible of interpretation in terms of a modified Lôschian system.

In recent years much of the criticism of central-place theory has been directed at its concept of demand. Daly and Brown (1964, p. 6) claim that in applying the theory to reality difficulties arise through its direct equation of demand with population. They also criticise Berry and Garrison (1958a), as indeed have Bunge (1962, p. 146) and Davies (1968, p. 146), for equating the threshold of central functions with the population of the central places rather than with that of their market areas (cf. Haggett and Gunawardena, 1964). They point out that demand varies with the income, occupational, age, and sex structure of the population; Szumeluk (1968b, pp. 8–9) lists other variables as well. Yet Christaller (1966, p. 50) held that the range of a good is influenced inter alia by the ‘price-willingness of the consumer’, which in turn depends on ‘the income conditions, the social, professional, and cultural structures, and the customs and special demands of the population’.

Numerous studies highlight deviations from central-place theory evidenced by consumer behaviour. Consumers, whether resident in rural regions (Golledge et al., 1966) or in metropolitan areas (Clark, 1968), do not necessarily patronise the nearest centre. Johnston and Rimmer (1967) found that in central Victoria relatively few consumers visit a centre in each of the levels above their own town and many shop only locally. Similarly Sharp (1967, p. 183) found that in northern New South Wales less than one-third of consumers make use of the central-place hierarchy at all of its levels; the rest shop almost exclusively at one centre. However a model purporting to measure the relative attractiveness of towns in Iowa to households in given locations has been found to yield more accurate predictions of consumer behaviour than the assumptions of central-place theory (Rushton et ah, 1967). Although Christaller (1966, p. 52) had included ‘subjective economic distance’ as well as the importance of a central place among the factors influencing the range of a good, he omitted the consumer’s subjective evaluation of a centre’s importance (Mayfield, 1963).

Undoubtedly the most serious limitations of central-place theory in its applicability to the geography of retailing stem not so much from its treatment of demand, important though these limitations are, as from its concept of production. Since in retailing the decision-making unit is the firm and most retail firms sell a variety of goods the range of a good is affected by the product mix and the pricing policy of individual establishments. These considerations are in turn influenced by the organisational structure of firms and the extent to which they enjoy internal economies of scale. Yet the foundations of central-place theory rest not on the market behaviour of retail firms but on the range of a good (Szumeluk, 1968a, p. 34; cf. Garner, 1967, p. 788). Berry and Garrison (1958c, p. 116) hold that the central-place model is compatible with the long-term equilibrium position of the multiproduct firm. But because the central-place model is static, deterministic, and retrospective it cannot be used to predict the functions of shopping centres given the differential growth of multiproduct firms and the organisational structure of retailing.

Nor can central-place theory shed light on the internal arrangement of shops within centres, which necessarily invokes considerations of site, rent, and external economies of scale. Just as the literature on manufacturing displays a gulf between location theory and rent theory so the literature on retailing reveals a gulf between rent theory and central-place theory. Yet the importance of site and rent to retailing needs no underscoring. Moreover given the extent and nature of the market the arrangement of shops within a centre reflects in part the economies which particular shop types derive from juxtaposition.

An analysis of spatial retail patterns also involves social and political considerations. Shopping patterns reflect to a greater or lesser extent the attitudes and values of a particular society, as witness the striking contrasts between Britain and the United States or less strikingly perhaps between Britain and France. At the same time economic forces are modified by government intervention through the control of shop types, forms of retail organisation, trading conditions, and above all through town-planning controls. Thus retail patterns in common with the entire human landscape of which they are a part result from a complex interplay of economic, political, social, and historical factors.

Yet to state this is not to detract from the contribution that has been made by centr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• preface
• 1 Retail Geography and Central-Place Studies
• 2 Retail Sites and Spatial Affinities
• 3 Retail Organisation & Government Regulation
• 4 Retail Markets and Establishment Size
• 5 Retail Trends and Spatial Competition
• 6 Shopping-Centre Delimitation and Classification
• 7 Hierarchical Systems: Selected British Studies
• 8 Traditional Markets and Shopping-Centre Systems
• 9 Hierarchical Systems: Selected American Studies
• 10 Centrality, Markets, and Shopping-Centre Structure
• 11 Prediction Techniques and Retail-Location Models
• Index