EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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2609. Facility location under agglomeration and two-stage customers’ spatial choice

Invited abstract in session MA-61: Advances in Location Analysis , stream Locational Analysis.

Monday, 8:30-10:00
Room: S10 (building: 101)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Vladimir Marianov
Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
2. Gonzalo Mendez-Vogel
Department of Engineering Sciences, Universidad Andres Bello
3. Armin Lüer-Villagra
Department of Engineering Sciences, Universidad Andres Bello
4. H.A. Eiselt
University of New Brunswick

Abstract

Most stores offering clothing, electronics, phones, and similar shopping goods, agglomerate in clusters —malls or shopping districts. This location pattern facilitates multipurpose shopping, which consists of purchasing more than one good during the same trip, and comparison shopping, the process of comparing products of different stores, but serving the same purpose, before purchasing.
Clustering leads to a two-stage (or sequential) destination choice by customers. They decide first on a cluster to visit, and then, the stores to visit within the cluster. The two stages are not independent, as the first decision depends on the stores in the cluster: if a consumer is in search of a product serving a purpose, the number of alternative stores that fulfill that purpose in the cluster, and the number of stores offering other products in the same cluster, affect the selection of the chosen cluster.
This agglomeration and the correlation are not represented in the customer choice rules common in location models (Multinomial Logit, Gravitational rules), as they do not take into account the spatial distribution of stores, although modifications to gravitational and Logit rules have been suggested by marketing researchers.
We explore a Nested Logit model fit for the spatial choice process and later use it to formulate, for the first time, a location model that includes the two-stage process and the spatial agglomeration.
Preliminary computational experience is also presented.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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