An Empirical Study On Factos That Have Impacts On Urban Trade Area And Its Competitiveness

Existing theories of trade area are developed from the angle of micro-enterprise. But with the acceleration of urbanization, the emerging of trade area of city, those existing theories cannot meet practical needs. Based on this, the notion of trade area of city is put forward from a medium perspective and the issues that affect competitiveness of trade area of the city are discussed in this paper. It proves to be a meaningful study in academic and reality.The study is about summary of overseas studies in trade area from the perspective of attractiveness. Furthermore, the study illustrates the domestic literature from the perspective of mechanism of formation, layout, expansion, competition, and essential factors of trade areas. Based on these studies, the issue of urban trade area is addressed in this thesis. And some essential factors, that affect the competitiveness of urban trade area, is put forward. They are the factors of location, scale, brand and kind of business. The hypothesis of this paper is based on these. This paper constructs models on variety methods to estimate the impact of various factors and its influence degree to competitiveness of urban trade area.Location of urban trade area is the most important factor that has great influence on the competitiveness. Based on those related location theories, this paper remodified the "inversely proportional to the square other distance" in Huff modified model, that is, the distance between the customers and trade areas multiplies the distance between the trade area and urban commercial center. So the conclusion is:the probability of consumer shopping in urban trade area and the scale of it are indirect proportion; the distance of consumer to trade area and the distance from trade area to commercial center are in inverse proportion. Cultural education system and transportation system are of the greatest impact on the development of urban trade area.The scale of urban trade area can be measured from two angles, inputs and outputs. From the angle of outputs, the total amount of wholesale and retail trade is measured; in terms of inputs, elastic coefficient of newly increased fixed and inputs of infrastructure to urban trade area are 1.08 and 0.84 respectively, which are in concurrent relationship and the elasticity is comparatively large. So, we get the conclusion that the population density, average wage, communication condition, are in concurrent relationship to total retail sales of consumer goods, which elastic coefficients are 0.3,0.96, and 0.84. The effect of average wage on urban trade area is three times of that of population density. There is also a close relationship between the scale of urban trade area and logistics, industry and agriculture.There are still some problems such as the indistinct of main function, the unreasonable structure and convergence of kind of business. Use AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to analyze optimum combination of kind of business. The large scale of kind of business is more important than the small one to the central urban trade area. So large supermarkets, shopping malls, and department stores should be located and pair up some small ones.While in suburban trade area, for some remote areas are away from downtown, the small and medium-sized kind of business should be located and pair up the large ones. Different urban trade areas'main function is different, so the combination of different kinds of business should match the main function.The brand of urban trade area consists of series of factors, including the image, public praise, business location, commercial reputation, and after-sale services. According to the structural equation modeling, the business location is of the greatest importance. And the reputation is in the second place.This paper had a comprehensive competitiveness evaluation scored and sorted on trade area of provincial capital through factor analysis, which focus on the analysis of four factors of urban trade area.The top five cities are Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin. The sorting of eastern coastal cities is in the front rank, and those of central and western regions are in the middle and postposition. The results coincide with the economic development of eastern, central and western regions. Five measures are proposed to enhance and upgrade the competitiveness of urban trade area from reasonable planning and layout, improvement of infrastructure construction, optimum combination of kind of busines, strengthening the management and creating brand of urban trade area.Finally, conclusion of the relationship between urban trade area and the development of regional economy is obtained,that is, highly correlated with the three industries. This paper adopts Vector Autoregression Model (VAR) and found that a long-term equilibrium co-integration relationship exists between urban trade area and regional economic development. One-way Granger causality exist between local economic growth and the development of urban trade area. A vector error correction model is put froward in order to measure the relationship of short-term fluctuation and long-term equilibrium between urban trade area and regional economy. Two coefficients of error-correction are-0.11 and-0.05, in line with the reverse correction mechanism. The absolute values of the coefficients reflects the adjustment deviation from long-run equilibrium.The originalities of this study lie in the following aspects:Firstly, it clearly puts forward a point that trade area should be divided into enterprise trade area and urban trade area, which avoids the confusion of application of those definitions. Enterprise trade areas are of micro-property, which mainly focus on the attraction of single retail enterprises. Urban trade areas are of medium-property, which mainly study how the retail enterprises in the same area attract customers.Secondly, many scattered factors that bear influence on the competitiveness of the urban trade area are divided into four elements categories, location factor, scale factor, brand factor, kind of business factor. The classification is the first time to put forward in current studies about urban city area.Thirdly, a location remodified model is proposed. That is, "inversely proportional to the square of the distance" in Huff modified model is replaced by the distance between the customers to trade areas multiplication the distance between the trade area to urban commercial center. So the remodified model has more explanatory power.Fourthly, this paper estimate the impact of various factors, such as location,scale, kind of business, brand, and the intensity of the influence on urban trade area through variety methods. In terms of the study of the relationship between scale of urban trade area and population, income, a originality views is put forward, namely, it is the factor'quality'of average wage of staff and workers, rather than the'quantity' of population density, that achieve the development of urban trade area. This paper puts forward that some large supermarket, shopping mall, and department stores should be located at central trade area, and small or medium-sized kind of business should be located in suburban trade area. Some small enterprises houl be located in remote areas, which are in suburban areas or far away from the city centers. Through the structural equation modeling (SEM) method during the study on brand of urban trade area, we may conclude that location is the key element among impacts on urban trade area brand.