Retail Strips Marketing Geography

GGR252H5 S - Marketing Geography

Introduction:

Retail strips, which is one of the special retail landscapes in Canada. Just as its name implies, the typical layout is that many retail stores such as independent stores are close to each other and form “strips”. Many different types of independent stores are close together because they want to operate their retail business more effectively. However, there are many issues will influence their retail forms. The first issue is attraction, which is also called “size”. As known to us, independent stores do not have larger size than shopping centre or power centre, which implies they cannot have stronger power either. From customers’ perspective, people prefer to choose higher attraction places as their shopping destinations. So, independent stores have to close together to expand their “attraction”. The second issue is competition. Nowadays, Canadian retail market structure is not only being changed by the competition among domestic retail stores, but also from the foreign retail stores. For instance, arrival of American retailers will increase the competition in the Canadian retail market and many domestic retail stores will definitely change their retail forms in order to against competition. The third issue is location and population. A good location can help retail stores to do their business more effectively because they can find their target market or people and help them to do their businesses more easily. So, the functions of retail strips are helping retail stores to against competitions, increasing the probability of consumers’ expenditure and helping the success of their businesses.

Plan of the retail strip:

Plan of the retail strip is the tool to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of retail strip. The figure below has demonstrated the plan of Dundas Street strip from Given Road to Franzer Drive/Burslem Road.

Discussion of Retail Strip:

The retail strip has organized by many different types of stores such as independent retail stores, services and franchises and they are also lacking of clustering. First of all, there is a private animal hospital which is a typical type of independent store in this retail strip. Many car dealers such as Hyundai, Shell Gasoline station, Pizza Hut are all franchises. Overall, this strip is focus on convenience goods and specialty goods. For instance, there is a Korean food market in this strip, and it is very convenience for many people to buy daily goods and necessities. Convenience goods are always cheaper and people will not high involve buying them. For example, goods in Korean food market is very cheap