Transport Infrastructure Investment Impact On Retail Business Performance

As one of the important macro-environmental factors which can have influence on the retail business, the transport infrastructure can affect circulation efficiency and distribution efficiency of retail business. And also, as the first capital of the economic development, transport infrastructure have great significance for economic growth, to scholars, the impact of transport infrastructure on economic development has been an important area of research. Therefore, we choose to study the impact which transportation infrastructure on retail business performance, it is an investigation of the impact of external environment on the retail business performance in quantitative way, but also can research the impact of which transport infrastructure on economic development in meso-level, so the perspective of this study have some innovative.In this paper, we analysis the mechanism of the impact that transport infrastructure have on the retail business performance from the perspective of theoretical and empirical. In theoretical analysis, we analyzed the direct impact and indirect impact that the transport infrastructure on the retail business performance. In empirical analysis, we constructed static and dynamic panel data models to test the way and the degree that various traffic infrastructure impact on retail business performance in long-term and short-term, by using2001-2012panel data of retail enterprises above designed size of China. The static panel model is estimated using a fixed effects model, the dynamic panel model is estimated using a first-order GMM estimation method, and give a comparative analysis about the results of the two estimates. The empirical results show that the construction of the road network has significant effect on retail performance both in short-term and long-term. The construction of highway network and first class road network can improve the retail business performance both in short term and long term, but the second class road network can improve the retail business performance only in the short-term. In addition, the highway network increased he ratio of sales and cost of retail enterprise in the static panel model. Highway transportation ability has a significant positive influence on retail business performance only in the short term. Civil car ownership improve the retail business performance both in the short and long term, but also increase the cost of sales to retail enterprises in the short term. In this paper, the research results indicate that, the transportation infrastructure, as one of the important external environment of retail enterprises, can affect the performance of retail enterprises. At the same time, through the study of the relationship between transport infrastructure and retail enterprises above designed size of China, we also certificate transportation infrastructure is one of the important basic factors to promote economic development from the meso-level. Therefore, to guide and promote the development of retail enterprises, local governments should construct and improve transportation infrastructure combines the regional conditions.