The modern marketplace provides consumers considerable flexibility that was not previously present. The variety and choice offered by the marketplace allows consumers to undertake a particular activity at several different locations. And by extending hours and days they are open, retail stores accommodate diverse personal schedules.
These location criteria and consumer characteristics combine and interplay in ways that have produced the pronounced retail structural trends summarized in Table 4, trends that are seen in metro regions across the United States.
TABLE 4. Major trends in retail market structure
Retail activity increasingly polycentric and dispersed
Planned shopping centers dominate market
Smaller malls cluster around major malls
"Big Boxes" market share growing
"Super" stores growing in kind and number
Many chains prefer stand alone sites
Dining out continues strong
Drive to and through convenience growing
Source: Nelson & Niles 1999
Figure 1 shows how one of these trends, the growth of planned shopping centers, has developed in the Seattle metro area. Planned shopping centers of three or more stores now number over 450 and contain about 80 million square feet of leasable area. They are spatially dispersed and are located where there is good auto access.
The modern retail structure has in turn produced profound changes in personal and household travel patterns that must be understood in order to i
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