From Ariel:
Fashion retailing is a large business in Hong Kong. Due to expensive rents, retailers want to choose store locations where they will earn the highest profit. When retailers choose a good location for the store, it allows for a greater chance of success for the company both in growth and finance. In Hong Kong, GIS is usually applied in areas like construction engineering, environmental science and land development. Recently, there have been more businesses using GIS because it helps promote business decision making capabilities.
One new application of GIS is in fashion retailing. A study was conducted in Hong Kong between two shopping plazas with the aim to model a shopper’s walking pattern through a mutli-storey plaza by identifying “a set of environmental or spatial variables, correlating them with non-spatial ones like frequency of passing-by, degree of familiarity.†The two shopping plazas that were chosen had different characteristics. One of the plazas, the Grand Century Place is modern and 7 – storey high while the second plaza, the Prudential Center is 6 – storey high.
To model walking patterns, nodes represented the facilities and entrances, exits, and escalators; whereas the plaza stores were represented by polygons with their entrances represented by nodes. Line segments represented the paths and feasible walkways between the nodes. Then attribute tables were created to associate the spatial entities such as a store table and a path attribute table.
The study concluded that the stores next to key entrance points, especially next to bus terminals or the transit system, were most advantageous. The study also found that shoppers walked through spacious, open passages more then narrow passages and there were indications that there was a concentration of shoppers on the lower level in the Grand Century Place. The concentration of shoppers may be due to the fact that the plaza is extremely big and it would cause the shoppers fatigue if they walked through the entire plaza.
This application demonstrates that GIS can be valuable to the fashion industry because it can help retailers select a profitable location when deciding where to situate their stores. Choosing a good store location increases the stores’ profits because within a plaza: there are many stores that sell similar products so shoppers have a variety of choices. This creates competition among the stores since shoppers can compare the products sold. With the use of GIS, store retailers can better determine the variables that could affect their profit. It would be inappropriate to rent an expensive location if a profit will not be made and with GIS, retailers can make determinations before they rent the location. By routing the pattern of plaza shoppers, the study also provides the fashion industry with shoppers’ preferences. The shoppers’ preference will give the fashion industry an indication as to which type of store would earn profit if it was situated in that location. Although this study was conducted in Hong Kong, GIS could benefit the fashion industry in other countries as well.