ABSTRACT

Understanding consumers’ spatial choice behaviors has been an important research focus in the field of regional science. Shopping environments where consumers exercise their choices change continuously, affecting as well as being affected by such choices and preferences. For instance, the large-scale retail market in Japan was first dominated by department stores that emerged at the beginning of the westernization of Japan (i.e., the end of its national isolation policy) around 1900; the department stores were the symbol of metropolises and the most fashionable, popular choice for urban consumers to shop in (Sugioka, 1991; Takaoka and Koyama, 1991). During the period of rapid economic growth after World War II, however, chain stores of general supermarkets that offered much lower prices than department stores came to dominate the Japanese retail market, especially in urban areas. Further, the motorization in Japan that followed this development generated the need for a new shopping environment to support access by car with large parking facilities. Accordingly, new types of retailers such as roadside stores, specialty chain stores, suburban-style department stores, and shopping mall complexes have burgeoned in recent years, resulting in intensified competition between traditional retailers, including urban department stores and those newly developed large-scale retailers. As the shopping environments increasingly diversify spatially, consumers’ spatial choice behaviors are also becoming so complex that it is necessary to investigate them under these various settings.