ABSTRACT
The successful development of a retail scheme in today’s competitive and ever-changing retail marketplace presents a formidable challenge to real estate entrepreneurs. Market analysis is one of the most crucial stages in designing a retail development scheme that will successfully cope with the new challenges of today’s retail marketplace. Within this context, this chapter discusses first the new frontiers in retailing as well as their implications in terms of planning new retail development projects and assessing their market potential. It then proceeds with the discussion of the four basic stages of a typical market analysis for a retail development project, while pointing out in each stage the relevance of the new trends in retailing. The first stage focuses on the different methodologies for defining the project’s trade area, while the second stage focuses on the analysis of competing retail developments, which needs to take into account features that make them more attractive in the new retailing environment. In the third and fourth stages the focus shifts on consumer shopping patterns and the estimation of the project’s sales potential and supportable square footage, with special emphasis on assessing as accurately as possible potential in-store sales as opposed to online sales.
