STORE LOCATION: PROBLEMS AND METHODS 4: Local site and store evaluation issues Available to Purchase

The last article in this series discussed ways of assessing the viability of a store on a specific site. The techniques discussed in that article are used to determine how the general locational characteristics of the potential trade areas of the site will affect sales at a new outlet. However, a store's performance can be strongly influenced not only by such general trade‐area characteristics but also by micro‐level features of the site. For example, whatever the number of potential customers in the locality, if an outlet has unattractive and dingy surroundings, lacks viability, or has poor local access, it will probably attract little business. In the first section of this article, therefore, the authors examine ways of estimating the nature and significance of such micro‐level site features. This takes us down to the third level in the “search‐viability‐micro” strategy suggested in article 2 (RDM, Nov/Dec 1984, p. 41). In the second section the authors turn to the evaluation, not of potential new outlets, but of existing outlets. Given the massive investment that major retailers have tied up in existing stores, as compared to that put into each additional store, it is remarkable that so little work has done on methods of evaluating existing stores. In the authors' view, both the estimation of the effects of micro‐level factors and the evaluation of existing outlets are grossly under‐researched areas.