Market area analysis with a focus on the spatial relationship between sites and their visitors

Abstract

This article proposes a new approach to market area analysis. Market area analysis is conducted in various academic fields, such as retail geography, marketing science, transportation science, and tourism study. It aims to understand the factors that affect visitors' choice behavior, which improves the performance of various sites, such as stores, restaurants, museums, and stadiums. Methods for market area analysis, however, have not been fully developed in the literature. To fill the research gap, this article proposes new methods of market area analysis. The first method considers the relationship between a site and its visitors. Our focus is on the spatial pattern of visitors around a site. The second method discusses the spatial relationship between the visitors of two sites. We evaluate the competing relationship between different sites. We applied the methods to the analysis of mountain climbers in Japan. The results gave us useful and interesting empirical findings, indicating the method's soundness.