Creation of a scoring-model to measure the attractiveness of middle-sized city- centres for consumers

Abstract

The historically grown symbiosis of city and commerce is starting to disrupt. Present studies have revealed, that the upcoming competition from e-commerce and suburban malls is increasingly endangering inner-city commerce. City Centres are thus losing their full supply function. In order to maintain inner-city areas’ attractiveness for consumers, cities have to take action. To determine which factors are relevant for city centres to attract consumers, a qualitative study with eight expert interviews was conducted. This resulted in 31 identified factors subsequently divided into eight groups. Afterwards, a quantitative study with n = 202 participants was undertaken by means of a maximum-difference analysis and a kano-analysis. A method was developed to combine the objective, mathematical results of the maximum-difference analysis with the subjective estimations of the kano-analyses. This allows assigning each factor a weight representing its relative part of the city’s attractiveness. Based on a judgement of each of the factors, this method further enables one to combine the factor’s judgement with its weight and thus outline the attractive-ness of cities for consumers on a scale from 0 to 100. In this way, shortcomings in attractiveness can be identified and their potential for improvement can be valued.