Market reach for retail services

Abstract

Retail is concentrated in areas where demand is high. A measure of market potential can be used to calculate place-specific demand for retail services. The effect of distance on market potential depends on the willingness of consumers to travel for the products they purchase. The spatial reach of demand is frequently operationalized using a distance-decay function. The purpose of this paper is to estimate such distance-decay functions for different branches of the retail sector. The paper uses spatial data from the Stockholm region in Sweden. The results indicate that, in line with theory, there are indeed differences in the distance decay of demand among retail subsectors.