Local Indicator of Spatial Agglomeration between Newly Opened Outlets and Existing Competitors on a Street Network

Abstract

Distance from competitors is a key factor in retail site selection and profitability. To understand the locational tendency that each newly opened outlet locates close to or far from existing competitors in a target area, a specific method is needed. Hence, this study aims first to develop a statistical method to discover the local spatial associations between newly opened and existing point-like outlets on a street network. We achieve this objective by extending the network local cross K function. The second objective is to evaluate the practicality of the proposed method by applying it to restaurants in a trendy district in Tokyo. Specifically, this study focuses on answering two questions: first, whether each newly opened restaurant is closely located to existing ones or not and, second, whether each existing restaurant attracts newly opened restaurants or not. The results show that the method is useful for revealing the location tendencies of retail outlets toward competitors.