Pilot Questionnaire
Geography Questionnaire
- How often do you come to the shop?
2. Where do you come from?
3. Why do you come to this shop?
4. Where do you travel for your holiday?
5. How much on average do you spend at this store?
6. What sort of things do you buy at this store?
7. When you travel, are the things bought predominantly for you or other people?
8. Do you visit similar stores around this area?
The problems with my pilot questionnaire were that in the 2nd question I did not specify whether I meant town, village or country. So this may prove confusing when I write up my results and it will prove confusing for the people I ask it to. Also my 4th question could have offended some members of the public as they might have deemed it a personal question, and so might of refused to answer it. Another problem is that I should have a list of things that they could have bought at HMV, as it would prove more effective and efficient. I also found that my pilot questionnaire was missing a introduction, this also proved difficult as people didn’t know why I was asking them questions. Another problem would have been that I would not have been able to work out the distance that they traveled from. I then put forward some solutions to my problems and came up with my improved questionnaire.
Geography Questionnaire
Hello I am from D.C.G.S and am investigating the sphere of influence of different stores for my GCSE Geography course work. May I ask you to answer this short questionnaire.
- How often do you come to the shop?
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
2.What town or village do you come from?
3.How long did it take you to get here?
________________________________________________________________________
4.What form of transport did you use today?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5.What other shops would you go to?
A)
B)
C)
6.What sort of things do you buy at the store?
A) CD
B) Games
C) Tape
D) DVD
E) Video
7.What was the extent of the traffic as you traveled here?
8.Would you travel further for better quality?
________________________________________________________________________
As you can see I have made several improvements to my questionnaire, the first of which was that I wrote an introduction, so that the people know what my purpose is when I ask them to answer my questionnaire. Another was that I gave them a multiple question, and I was able to ask them one factor that could affect the sphere of influence. This factor being the extent of traffic. This will help me in seeing how, and to what extent traffic can affect the sphere of influence of the two sites.
My questionnaire will provide primary data, which will allow me to come with an accurate depiction of the sphere of influence. My secondary data will include population statistics and the number of shops present in each Town. Meaning that I can work out the breaking point of each town by using the formula:
I can also use the number of shops to calculate the breaking point.
Another factor affecting people is the day and the time of day. So as to make my results unbiased I went on a weekend on both days, and I also made sure that I went there at approximately the same time, which was 12 in the afternoon. Both the time and the day could easily influence my data. As a result of asking people on a weekday, the results may vary a lot then if I went at the weekend. The reasons for this could be that people are working, or traffic is worse on one day than another or that people generally have more spare time on the weekend. I have to take these all into account when I come to analyzing my results.
Brent Cross
Octagon
Analysis and Conclusion:
The two bar graphs show us the number of people visiting other stores along with the ones, which I had studied. The significance of this is that you can see the push and pull factors that each of these bar graphs represent. The pull factors would include the stores, which are often chain stores such as Marcs and Spencers, John Lewis and Pizza Hut. The push factors may include the level of traffic, availability of parking and the cost of parking. The significance to these results is that you can see what store makes up the most of the sphere of influence in each town. In Brent Cross, it’s Pizza Hut where as in High Wycombe it’s Marcs and Spencers.
By Using Reilly’s law of retail gravitation we able to see the breaking point between the two shopping centers that I have studied. By comparing the number of shops present at each one we are able to establish the breaking point.
Db=22.8÷ (1+(√110÷50))=9.18 customers
The breaking point in this case is 9. This means that out of every 22 people that only 9 go to High Wycombe shopping center and the remaining 13 go to Brent Cross shopping center.
We can also establish the breaking point by comparing the population of the two towns:
Db=22.8÷ (1+(√263464÷162105))=10.02miles
The breaking point in this case is 10. This reveals that the breaking point is 10 miles from High Wycombe and 22.8miles from Brent Cross.
In both equations DB= the breaking point which we are trying to find. If you take the first equation than the first number is 22.8. This is the distance in miles between the two shopping center. The numbers in the brackets refer to the number of shops in the first one and the population size in the second equation.
The breaking point shows the point at which customers find it preferable, because of distance, time and expense considerations to travel to one center rather than the other.
How ever this way of determining the breaking point is not that accurate when based in reality. The problems experienced by using Reilly’s law are that they are based on the following:
- The larger town, the larger the sphere of influence.
- People shop in a logical way, seeking services nearer to them in terms of distance and time.
- There may be traffic congestion on the way to the larger town as well as the fact that parking could be limited and expensive.
- The smaller town could have fewer but higher quality stores.
- Advertising may differ and so means that the smaller town may advertise more effectively compared to the larger town.
(The table above is made of secondary data collected from ………………)
The results from above can seriously effect the sphere of influence of a town. The larger the population the more people that need their needs satisfied with services. The more services the more people are willing to travel there for better variety and quality of shops. If you take it that the bigger City with more shops in and bigger population has a bigger sphere of influence then I would expect that Brent Cross should have a sphere of influence which is quite bigger than High Wycombe’s sphere of Influence. Also the percentage of people from one age to another can also affect the sphere of influence. As if there is a town full of the majority of the people being 75+. Then realistically they would spend less due to their income and their age. But if you have a town full of the majority of people being 16-74, then you will see that these people have more disposable income and so will spend more and will travel further for the better quality goods available. How ever there are always exceptions. Another key feature is the sex of the majority of people. I have justified that Females between the ages of 16-21 will probably spend the most on goods. Using this we can see why a town may have a larger sphere of influence then others. This leads me to believe a variety of things can easily influence a sphere of influence whether it’s the sex or age of the gender, or the population or infrastructure. So from this you can tell that a lot can affect the sphere of influence, this means that the sphere of influence of any place will never be the same. The population may or may not increase over the next years and some stores may go out of business. This leads to the uncertainty when referring to the sphere of influence. All of these makes it hard to prove that one sphere of influence is bigger than another town’s. As the sphere of influence is constantly changing then it’s hard to justify which sphere of influence is bigger and why.
Background Information:
Brent Cross:
By looking at the map it is clear to see that Brent Cross shopping center is situated near big cities such as Wembley and Harrow. It is also clear to see that it is in Greater London. This is a very big advantage as regards to the number of people visiting the shopping center. As Brent Cross has a population of 200,000+ then it is regarded as a fairly large city according to the hierarchy of settlements. Brent Cross having a population of 200,000+ means that it needs to provide more services to the population. Providing services to a wide population means the greater variety of shops and services and the wider the area from which people will travel to use the center. This means that Brent should have (according to the hierarchy of settlement based upon services) one covered area in the city center, many shopping streets and several edge-of-city centers.
High Wycombe:
By looking at the map it’s clear that the Octagon is situated near some large cities such as Amersham, Beaconsfield and Maidenhead. High Wycombe unlike Brent Cross is not situated near London, and so won’t get as many people visiting it, as it would have if it were situated nearer London. High Wycombe has a population in excess of 150,000. This means that it has to provide a certain amount of services to its population but in the same extent that Brent Cross does. As it does not have as many people living there, this reveals that it must not have as much variety as Brent Cross.