Assess the impact of out-of-town centre retailing areas on the regions in which they occur.

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Assess the impact of out-of-town centre retailing areas on the regions in which they occur. (40 marks)

To start with, I believe the biggest effect these retailing areas have on the regions where they are situated is that they are draining sales in that surrounding area. For example, The Trafford centre which is situated in the former wasteland of 300 acres in the Dumplington district on the outskirts of Trafford Park is draining sales from surrounding towns and districts such as Bolton, Stockport, Altringham and Warrington by what was anticipated to be up to 20%. It hasn’t actually damaged those areas as bad ass that but has caused temporary decline and a smaller percentage in loss in sales of around 6%.

One of the biggest contributory factors to the impact of these out-of-town retailing areas on the surrounding areas is land value. Shops on the High Street of these surrounding areas pay a much higher rental value per square metre than in the out-of-town shopping centres. This means it is more profitable for companies to buy land in these out-of-town areas as they get a lot more money overall as the rental is cheaper and business is still good as lots of shoppers are constantly there using the facilities. A comparison for this can be seen between Oxford Street in London and Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. Oxford Street costs £4400 per square metre per year and Sheffield’s Meadowhall only costs £217 per square metre per year. You can see why these out-of-town retailing areas are more appealing to respective retailers.

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The out-of-town retailing areas are also much more appealing to families. In these retailing areas there are crèches where parents can drop their children off at the start of the day, go shopping and do what they need to do and then come back and pick them up. Also if parents don’t fancy dropping their kids off, there are multi-screen cinemas, bowling alleys, restaurants and many other attractions within the complex. This means shopping is no longer a problem for parents with children as they will not become bored and restless like they may do if they went on ...

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