The Evolving Concept of Retail Attractiveness: what makes retail agglomerations attractive when customers shop at them?

This paper attempts to contribute to a more thorough understanding of the on-site (in vivo) evaluation of retail agglomerations once shoppers have already made their destination choices. To address this issue, a modification of more conventional concepts of retail attractiveness that considers situational contexts is proposed and empirically tested. The survey comprised more than 2,000 on-site interviews of customers of an inner city shopping street and a competing peripheral shopping mall. The results show that the tenant mixand the atmosphere, unlike parking and accessibility, exert a major impact on distinct dimensions of perceived attractiveness. Furthermore, the empirical findings provide evidence that factors characterizing aspects of the individual shopping situation significantly affect on-site evaluation. Some methodological limitations and future research directions are also discussed.