Image of suburban shopping malls and two‐stage versus uni‐equational modelling of the retail trade attraction : An empirical application

The main objective of this research is to examine the nature of the image of shopping malls and to contrast the reliability of two models that analyse the attraction of retail trade; in the first model, image, distance and preference are considered; whereas in the second, preference is omitted. The initial hypothesis is that the apparently lower power of attraction of the image, compared to that of the distance, may be justified, in some way, by the modelling of a relationship that omits preference. The methodology applied uses a variety of multidimensional techniques to identify image dimensions, together with two focuses, the two‐stage versus the uni‐equational, to define retail trade attraction. As a result of the application in the suburban commercial setting of Alicante, three image dimensions are detected in the malls, as well as the superiority of the uni‐stage modelling in which the influence of preference on retail attraction is omitted.