Walk Rally Application for Revitalizing Shopping Areas

We investigated whether shoutengai, old shopping districts in Japan, can be revitalized by solving the disparity problem in the number of customers among shoutengai according to their location and by solving the problem of inequality in popularity among the stores in a shoutengai. We developed the "store appeal value", which is unique index of showing the attractiveness of a store and developed a walk rally application based on incentives based on the store appeal value. We investigated whether shoutengai can be revitalized by using our walk rally application. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed application, we conducted a demonstration experiment involving three shoutengai in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. By analyzing the behavior logs obtained from the experiment, we clarified that our store appeal value is appropriate. We were also able to show that it is possible to revitalize shoutengai by using our walk rally application, that is, to distribute customers among shoutengai and among stores in a shoutengai.