ABSTRACT
The study of retail location has been both a popular and traditional theme in human geography. There exists, therefore, a considerable amount of published material that spans a fairly long period of time. A frequent first impression on encountering the literature associated with the spatial aspects of retailing is of the contrast between this large body of material and the small number of important facets that have received any detailed attention. This paradox is, however, easy to explain and may be related to the strong influence of central place theory in human geography. Indeed, as Davies (1973a) points out, the popularity of retail studies within geography was in part due to the influence of central place theory which provided a basis for hypothesis formulation. This, together with the fact that retailing data are highly susceptible to statistical analysis, gave the subject particular importance in the early days of 'quantification'. Thus many retailing studies were prominent among the pioneering 'quantitative' contributions published in the 1960s. It is estimated that between 1960 and 1974, 500 papers on the general theme of the location of tertiary activities appeared in mainstream journals (White and Case, 1974).
