ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how to measure retail demand within existing or potential new store catchment areas. It considers the spatial interaction model (SIM) as a framework for discussion but the issues are appropriate for any form of retail assessment method. In some markets, such as automotive distribution, the requirement for customer registration means that existing patterns of demand for a product may be used as a proxy for future patterns. Microsimulation is a technique well suited for estimating 'missing' data, which of course is often the case with retail demand data. For most retail products demand needs to be considered in relation to who is the principal target for that product. The most common ways of disaggregating demand include gender, age, social class and ethnicity. Microsimulation can be defined as a methodology that is concerned with the creation of large-scale simulated population microdata sets for the analysis of policy impacts at the individual or household level.
