People using the Internet can have access to every shop selling the product that they want, so they can find the cheapest price and in some cases have their shopping delivered to their door, so they don’t have to leave the house or go to lots of different shops looking for the best price.
Sunbury Cross is also threatened by new large out-of-town shopping centres. How many people do you hear say “Im going shopping at Sunbury Cross”? People have started to shop in large out-of-town shopping centres like Bluewater. Bluewater has a at least 330 shops and restaurants. Now with more people owning a car or having 2 cars they can get to the shopping centres easily and with the more shops that are on offer all in one place then people go there. Tesco is another out-of-town shopping centre having built most of its branches just off the main town centre and having its own slip road to get to it, Tesco with its size can also offer people cheaper items because they buy in bulk from the suppliers.
On the other hand but Sunbury Cross is not threatened by new trends and modern technologies, as many middle age people still use Sunbury Cross for convenience and if people have not got the car then it is near and they can get to it either by bus or walking to it. Lots of middle age people don’t care about brand names or designer labels so they don’t mind the lack of designer shops at Sunbury Cross, they shop for cheap smart clothes. The older generation also don’t use computers as much, and don’t even use the Internet, so they definitely don’t shop on it. Some of the younger generation cant buy off the Internet because many companies don’t sell items over the Internet there homepages allow you to browse through there goods but then once you have found what you want you have to go out to the shop to actually but the item.
Now I have looked at both sides my overall opinion is that Sunbury Cross is not threatened by new trends and modern technology, because the internet has not been as ‘big’ as people had hoped not many people feel it is safe to use the internet because you have to give out your credit card details and internet hackers can access these files and so take money out of your bank, out of town shopping centres are too far away from many people and so it is not convenient to take a 2 hour car ride just to buy a few items.
Method
In this part of the coursework I will be telling you how I collected my data and what I am doing to try to answer the question ‘Is Sunbury Cross threatened by new trends and modern technology?’
First I wrote my introduction and then my prediction on whether on not new trends and modern technology are threatening Sunbury Cross.
Then I made a questionnaire and asked 100 people the questions to get an idea of what people thought of Sunbury Cross, the Internet and out of town shopping centres.
I asked a range of people from 3-12 to 61+ to give me an idea of what generation of people were shopping where.
I made these results into graphs, which made it easier to see the data, and made it look more presentable, under each graph I have explained what that graph means and its importance to my project.
I did an environmental survey to look at the environmental problems that Sunbury Cross has, and then looked to see if Bluewater or Lakeside has these problems.
All these questions were put into consideration when I wrote my conclusion.
In my conclusion I said my opinion on whether or not Sunbury Cross is threatened by new trends and modern technology.
Finally in my evaluation I put how well I think that I did in this coursework and what would have helped me.
Analysis Of Questionnaire
This graph shows that not many people shop at Sunbury Cross regularly only 36 out of 100 said that they shopped at Sunbury Cross regularly, and I think that most of these would be for basics from off-licences such as bread and the daily newspaper.
42 people said that they shop on the Internet which is quite a lot, but if you look at a graph further on not many of them shop regularly on the Internet.
From this graph you can clearly see that if given the choice then most people would go to one of the bigger shopping centres like Staines, Hounslow or Kingston rather then go to Sunbury Cross.
This graph shows that although my other graph proved that a lot of people do shop on the Internet most people only shop on it once a year or every 6 months.
This graph shows that most people don’t visit an out of town shopping centre enough to really threaten business to Sunbury Cross.
You can see by these results that people go to out of town shopping centres for better variety that Sunbury Cross does not give them.
Environmental Survey
Traffic- The traffic at Sunbury Cross is quite bad as it is right next to the M3 and the A308 so the traffic can be very bad especially in rush hour traffic jams are normal. Bluewater and Lakeside don’t have the problem as bad as Sunbury Cross because they are out of town then they have lots of space for parking.
Vandalism/Graffiti- The vandalism isn’t too bad at Sunbury Cross as there are CCTV cameras watching the shopping area. As seen below.
Graffiti in the sub-ways is very bad though it is so bad that it has to be re-painted every 2 weeks.
Above is a re-painted On the right you can
Subway an example of the graffiti
Bluewater and Lakeside might have a small problem with Vandalism because it seems to be a national problem.
Rubbish- The rubbish at Sunbury Cross is not that bad, because there bins that people use. Because Bluewater and Lakeside are so big they have people going around picking up the litter to keep the shopping centre clean.
Pollution- Sunbury Cross has got very bad pollution because of the amount of cars that go past everyday, Bluewater and Lakeside probably have this problem as well again I think it is more of a national problem of people using there cars unnecessarily.
Noise Pollution- The noise pollution at Sunbury Cross is quite bad for the same reason as above there are always cars going past, Bluewater and Lakeside have the same problem but because of the amount of people that there are in the shopping centre as well then it creates a lot of noise.
Is The Future Of Sunbury Cross Threatened By New Trends And Modern Technology?
New trends are big modern out of town shopping centres like Bluewater for example. These big shopping centre are very big and have lots of shops in them Bluewater has about 330 shops.
They are out of town because the land is much cheaper and you couldn’t find the space to put something as big as Bluewater in the middle of London.
Modern technology is the Internet, more and more people are getting the Internet and having it lets them shop from all over the world and in some cases you can have your goods delivered to your door. It is becoming even easier to get onto the Internet to shop for things because even if you don’t have a computer then you can go to an Internet café, and use the facilities there to find what you are looking for.
Comparison Bluewater & Sunbury Cross
As you can see from the maps (see next 3 pages) Bluewater is much bigger then Sunbury Cross. You can see that just 1 floor of the 2-floored building holds more shops then Sunbury Cross does. The highlighted area is Sunbury Cross shopping centre here you can see the M3 on the bottom right hand side of the map and Staines Road West running past Sunbury Cross. The Parade opposite the shopping centre is where most of the off-licenses are.
From these 2 maps you can see why people go to Bluewater for the better variety, I also found this was the case in my questionnaire (see last graph) where most people went to Bluewater for better variety/quality.
Evidence Of Bluewater Not Harming Smaller Shops Business
Evaluation
I think I have done quite well in this project, I have put a lot of time into it and worked hard. I found it hard initially to start the project but once I got started I found it easier to do because I knew what I was going to do, and what I had to write.
It was difficult to find information on Sunbury Cross, as the Internet didn’t have any good information about the shopping centre there.
The part of the coursework that I found the easiest was the questionnaire and the analysis of the questionnaire.
What would have helped me do this coursework was more information given to me at the start about where to find the information needed to prove or disprove the question ‘Is the future of Sunbury Cross shopping centre threatened by new trends and modern technology’.
I think I have done well in this coursework and have answered the question given to me looking at both sides and giving my overall opinion at the end.
Conclusion
So I conclude that Sunbury Cross shopping centre is not threatened by new trends and modern technology on the evidence that the Internet has not taken off as many people said it would and many people feel its unsafe to shop on the Internet because you have to give out credit card details and these can be accessed by Internet hackers, some shops don’t have a website that sells goods some have a website that you can browse and find your goods then you have to go to the shop to buy it. Out of town shopping centres are too far away so its not practical to go all that way just to buy 1 top, and you can see by my evidence of Bluewater not harming smaller shops business that small shopping centres are coping fine and are not losing business to Bluewater.
Sunbury Cross is surviving well and expanding recently McDonalds opened a new store there and none of the existing stores have shut-down due to lack of business. Sunbury Cross is used by people in the local community and by people using the main roads either side of it.
