Date of Award
1984
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Abstract
With the increasing construction and expansion of shopping centres, and the emergence of integrated downtown shopping retail cores, consumers are likely to be attracted more and more to such organized shopping areas. The need to understand consumer spatial shopping behaviour toward shopping areas is apparent.;Huff's model of retail gravitation has been commonly used to predict consumer patronage patterns. This thesis focuses on modifying Huff's model to include the concept of choice set in the competitive system. The new model, called a proposed model, is also extended to include the effects of specific products/services, specific store, and shopping area image.;Data for the empirical testing were collected from a large scale survey of 823 shoppers in the City of London. The survey involved completing an 8-page questionnaire and keeping a two-week shopping diary. A usable sample of 482 cases was achieved, representing 58.6 percent of total participants.;The proposed model, the specific product/service, specific store and image construct were tested on the patronage behaviour of consumers with regard to trip and dollar expenditure in the non-downtown most-shopped area (NDT MSA) and Downtown through a set of seven hypotheses.;The results showed that the proposed model was very much superior to Huff's model for predicting and explaining trip and expenditure behaviour of consumers toward shopping areas. The specific product/service and store variables did not improve the proposed model. The image construct was found not to affect shopping behaviour for the NDT MSA, but two components of the image construct for Downtown--operational and facilitative factors--were associated with variations in trip and expenditure behaviour. Both components were also found to improve on the proposed model.;The study strongly underlined the usefulness of applying the choice set concept in the proposed model. The mass-distance construct was shown to explain an even higher proportion of variance of trip and expenditure behaviour using the proposed model.
Recommended Citation
Wee, Chow Hou, "Consumer Patronage Behaviour Toward Shopping Areas: A Modification And Extension Of Huff's Probabilistic Model Of Retail Gravitation" (1984). Digitized Theses. 1359.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/1359