International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B2. Istanbul 2004
a) capturing, manipulating and displaying business
information that involves location and dimension, e.g.
walking distance, travel distance, degree of spatial
aggregation or dispersion;
b) analyzing existing or creating new networks that are
pertinent to the business concerned; this can be very
specific like a fashion consumer network, or a general
form like a shopping plaza network;
simulation and projection of flow quantities along the network
based on changing variables.
2. STUDYING PLAZAS AND PARAMETERS
Two shopping plazas of very different characteristics are
chosen for this consumers’ routing behavior study. Both are
situated in the busiest parts of the city, highly accessible and are
popular for fashion shopping. The Grand Century Place (GCP)
is a relatively modern and sizeable 7-storey plaza. Figure 1
shows its layout plan. It can be divided into 2 areas - A and B.
Area A is designed as a circle with both outer and inner walking
paths. Area B is designed as a two-way path. One end is
connected with the outer circle path whereas the other to an
‘escalator to other levels. All the plaza entrances are mainly
located in Level 1. Linking the different levels are the lifts, the
3 escalators in area A and 1 escalator in area B. There are 198
stores in which 28% belongs to fashion retailing. These stores
are usually selling branded products and mainly located in
Level 2, 3 and 5. The next studied plaza, the Prudential Center
(PC) is a smaller size one with 6 levels - Bl to B3, LG, UG and
L1. Escalators connecting the different levels are in the middle
of this rectangular shape layout. Some stores in Level UG and
LG also have a street-level entrance. There are 130 stores in
which 51% belongs to fashion retailing. These are mostly small
boutiques, located mainly in Level LG and equally distributed
in other levels.
An unconventional approach is adopted to collect and analyze
the different data sets related to shoppers' behavior in this
study. The target shoppers’ walking paths inside the plazas are
followed and recorded. These are analyzed with a set of
environmental variables using the networking functions in a
GIS. This approach focuses mainly on the interactivity of
fashion stores and certain selected spatial components — plaza
entrance/exit, lift, escalator and toilet. With a view that
walking behavior is at times subtle especially for leisure
shopping. consumers/shoppers may not know they have a
certain preferred direction. In total, 73 shoppers to GCP and 62
to PC were interviewed and followed for at least one hour. The
proportions between male and female shoppers and shoppers of
different age groups were roughly the same.
3. DATA MODELING IN GIS
Figure 1 gives an example of how the various plaza stores and
facilities are modeled into nodes and paths for networking.
Basically all facilities and entrance/exit/escalators are modeled
as nodes, the stores as polygons and their entrance(s) as nodes.
A path is defined as a connected segment between each of these
nodes. These paths must be feasible walkways within the
plazas. Nodes and paths form a planar graph network for each
level of the two plazas. To link consccutive levels, an
imaginary path is modeled in between the two nodes
representing the escalator/lift points of the upper and lower
levels. This path might be unidirectional or bi-directional.
A number of attribute tables are created in association with
these spatial entities. The store attribute table will store the
store name, type of product, area and so on. More importantly,
the path attribute table will store information on shoppers’
walking behavior, e.g. the shopper-id, the frequency the
shoppers pass by, the observed behavior of the shopper in terms
of a) non-stop window shopping, b) stop window shopping, c)
walking into the store and d) passing by without any window
shopping.
By identifying and modeling a number of key plaza features
related to fashion shopping, a number of interesting shoppers
walking pattern may be drawn and analyzed with the numerous
attributes in the database. Some of these patterns are presented
in the following section.
ee Area A a : Area B
Grand Century Plaza
Prudential Center
Figure 1 Layout plans and node-path modelling of the two
plazas
4. PATTERN ANALYSIS
With reference to Figure 2, the following patterns might be
concluded from Grand Century Place:
l. Concerning connected points, the KCR (a mass transit)
entrance and the left exit are places with higher numbers of
passers-by. However, the lifts are not used at all by the
interviewed | shoppers, whereas pathways near the
escalators do not particularly envisage a high volume flow.
The outer circular walking path has the highest passenger
flow, but Area B is relatively quiet and shoppers take less
interest to walk through there.
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