SHOPPING STUDIES FOR REGIONAL PLANNING Experiences from the Netherlands.

The article explores the retail planning research for larger regions based on a shopping study carried out by the Department of Geography at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. To perform this study, a new research strategy was developed to reduce time and costs by using computer facilities for data collection as well as data handling. The retail planning research is intended to make a forecast of the spatial distribution of retail spending in the future. The application of a shopping model presents a useful device to calculate the effect of different sized centers in different locations.