1. Questionnaires
I have designed a questionnaire as previously mentioned, this will give me all the information I require to answer my main aim. I will hand out my questionnaire to the public and find out what they think about the area and I thought about my own individual questions for investigation. I will need to find out where they live, frequency of visit, mode of transport, goods bought and how far have they travelled.
2. Land use maps
I wrote down names of the shops and services in the area on a blank piece of paper then I redrawn it neatly on computer using Microsoft word.
Brent South Retail Park Harlesden
3. Pedestrian counts
I will be working with a partner to count how many pedestrian passes me every 5 minutes to have an average idea of how busy the area is.
4. Environmental Quality Survey
I designed my own environmental quality survey and adapted the survey to suit my needs by thinking about factors such as litter, care of pavements, street furniture, traffic and noise. The scale will be from 5 (being excellent) and 0 (being poor). This is a simple survey that will be carried out along a street, in a town or even in a park around the shopping centres. I do not need to interview people but it does require me to be observant. As the survey generates a score it is easy to produce graphs in Excel.
Land Use Map is a map of a given area, showing the different land uses in the area. On the top left hand corner of both of the Land use maps; we can see a number of categories with their own colour code. These categories were chosen because they were the most popular and common. I carried out this method by noting down the shops and services in each area on a piece of paper along with the road names and bus routes serving the area. Then I made a neat copy on the computer using microsoft word for both shopping centres. This would help prove or disprove the hypothesis because it will give me an idea of the different shops and services provided in the area.
Pedestrian Counts I carried out this method by working with a partner and counting the number of people who passed us in 5 minutes in 4 different locations within the shopping centres. I will display the results as a pictogram. This would help in proving or disproving the hypothesis because it will give me an average idea of how busy each area is.
Environmental Quality Survey This method was carried out by observing each area carefully and giving it a mark out of 5 (1 being the poorest and 5 being excellent) in two different locations within the both shopping centres. The factor that I had taken into consideration were:
- The pavements
- The number of cars
- The amount of litter
- Grass verges
- Trees
- Air
- Building conditions
- The amount of noise
- Street lights
- Area population
- The attractiveness of the area
- Weather amount of Vandalism
- Accessibility
- The natural environment
- Traffic congestion
This would help in proving or disproving my hypothesis because it will show me how well each area is maintained
Questionnaire I handed out my questionnaire to 30 people in each shopping centre in order to find the first hand opinions of the people that are prevalent in the areas. I will display the results of each of my questionnaire by using a variety of graphs This would help me in proving or disproving my hypothesis because it will allow me to make comparisons and help me to find out how suitable each areas is, in terms of shopping.
Graph B1) this graph shows how often people shop in the Brent South shopping centre. The majority said that they shop in Brent South sometimes. The most likely reason why most people don’t shop here weekly or daily is probably because it doesn’t have enough shops compared to other shopping centres like Brent cross, blue water and Milton Keynes at Luton. The shopping centre has high order shops and chain stores, which don’t sell items that need to be bought on a regular basis. For example DFS sells furniture and other house hold items, which are only bought once in a while. Most people may also have busy life and therefore don’t have enough time to shop.
Graph B2) this graph shows what people shop in Brent South for. The results shows that most people shop for other Comparison and specialist goods like, shoes, furniture, books, sport goods and clothes because that is what they expect to get from this shopping centre. There are shops like Next, TKMaxx, Burtons, Dorothy Perkin and sports world which are famous for clothes shopping and shops like Dfs, Borders and Lakeland popular for other items. Most people don’t buy food here because the shops here don’t sell food items which are consumed on daily basis. However, there is a starbuck and Lakeland café where people go to relax and socialise. It seems that there isn’t any food shop built in the shopping centre probably because there is a huge Tesco’s super market nearby.
Graph B3) this graph shows how much people spend on their shopping in Brent South. The graph shows that 50% of the people spend £100 or more suggesting that there are many high order shops which are quite expensive like Next, Dfs, GAME and Carphone warehouse. This also explains why people come here sometimes (as shown in graph B1), as they would not come here regularly just to spend over a £100.
Graph B6) this pie chart shows that 2/3 of the people say that the environment affects where they shop, whereas the 1/3 say that it does not. It suggests that most people like to go for shopping to places where the environment is pleasant and welcoming. In my opinion, this is the sort of environment that Brent South shopping centre offers as it more spacious and less crowded compared to busy high streets such as Oxford Street, it is away from populated area and has a sort of out-of-town location.
Graph A4) this graph shows how far the people live from the shopping centre. Most people who come here to shop live within 10 mile radius of this shopping centre. This is because they know the area well as they live close to this shopping centre and it does not take much time for them to come here. The cost of fuel and travel expenses is far less when the shopping centre is located within close vicinity which inevitably attracts more consumers of the local area.
Graph A7) this bar chart shows that number of people who shop here for different reasons. Most people say that the quality of the products sold here is good, this is followed by number of people saying that they live nearby and then by number of people who shop here because of more variety of the products. The graph also shows that the cheap prices of the products in this area do not really influence the number of shoppers. However, the quality of the products is more of the consumers primary concerns. This shows that more people care about the quality than the price of the products, which seems to suggest that people are willing to spend more money for a better quality. Therefore Brent South shopping centre aims to target high class, rich people. This agrees with the findings presented in graph A3, which shows that most people spend over a £100 for shopping.
Graph A5) this doughnut graph shows if people shop online. 20 people said that they shop online. This saves money and time by not travelling, cheaper deals on the net and able to make comparison between different sales – more variety on the net, able to browse through stocks which are not on display in stores, ultimately being more convenient etc. However not as much people shop online the reason could be unable to access the internet or unable to view the item up-close and personal for quality checking, e.g garments often have to be felt for their texture and quality or have to be tried on for the perfect fit.
Environmental Quality Survey
Date: 01/07/08 Time: 11:25am
Location: Brent South Retail Park
Description of Area: well organized and spacious
1 2 3 4 5
The Pavement: Mostly bumpy and rough 5 Smooth
Cars: Many car 4 No cars
The amount of litter: Lots of Litter 5 No litter
Grass Verges: Wide Grass Verges 5 None
Trees: Many trees 4 No Trees
Air: polluted air 5 No Pollution
Building conditions: Very poor condition 5 Excellent Condition
The amount of noise: A lot of noise pollution 5 Quiet and peaceful
Street Lights: Badly Lit 5 brightly lit
Area Population: Dense 5 Sparse
The attractiveness of the area: Awful 5 Very good
Weather: cold and rainy 1 Bright and sunny
Amount of Vandalism: A lot 5 Not at all
Accessibility: horrible 5 exceptional
The natural environment: unpleasant 5 pleasant
Traffic congestion: Very high 5 no congestion
Total: 74
Graph H1) This graph shows the number of people who shop at Harlesden. 17 out 30 said that they shop in Harlesden regularly, suggesting that there are many low order shops which sell cheap, convenience good such as food as shown in Graph H2. Graph H2 shows that the most frequently bought item is food. Food being a very regularly consumed item and is cheap to buy, which is why people come here to shop for it regularly.
Graph H6) This graph shows far people have travelled to shop in Harlesden. The findings clearly illustrate that people don’t travel further than 10miles to shop in Harlesden as it mostly sells cheap convenience goods which to implies that it has a small sphere of influence. This graph also display that of the 30 people that were sampled, all travelled within 10 mile radius of Harlesden. 23 persons travelled between 1 to 5 miles and only 7 between 6 to 10 miles. This suggests that people would probably only travel to Harlesden if they live closer to it and this further implies that Harlesden is not a dominating or attractive place for shopping, which is due to reasons drawn earlier relating to environment in graph H5. In that people would try to avoid heavy traffic conditions faced in Harlesden as much as possible, if they have to travel far. Therefore environment is one of the most important factors effecting shopping in Harlesden, depending on the amount of distance people have to travel, which in turn depends how far people live from Harlesden.
(Graph H7) this bar chart shows the number of people who shop here for different reasons. 14 people shop in Harlesden for having cheap products and 13 live nearby Harlesden shops. Whereas only two people pointed towards having more variety, and one for good quality. This means cheap products, more variety, live nearby and good quality are the only reasons why people shop in Harlesden. Referring back to Graph H6 which revealed that most people travelled 1 to 5 miles to get to Harlesden supports the results displayed on this graph as nearly have of the people said that they live nearby. Cheap products and living close to Harlesden shops appear to be the strongest factors influencing the reason for shopping here. In comparison, more variety and good quality are the weakest reasons. It aims to targets low to middle class people, that have low earning capacity that usually live in or close to Harlesden so that they are able to afford products being offered. Therefore the good quality is not an issue here. There is less variety of products, which indicates that there are many shops that offer the same kind of products. This is due to presence of immense variety of fast food takeaways, clothes, shoe shops that clearly sell similar products.
Graph H8) The doughnut graph shows if people shop online. 16 out of 30 people said that they shop online whereas rest of people said they do not shop online. People who shop online are usually those people who live quite far from Harlesden. This means that these people will only travel to Harlesden if they have a good reason to travel, that is the product that they are looking for in terms of quality and price, is available, if they are going to face traffic and parking problems. This justifies reason for, in Graph H6, that shows only 6 out of 30 people travelled between 6 to 10 miles. 14 out of 30 do not require to shop online possibly because they live close and probably prefer walking from shop to shop as a way of general outing. They would possibly buy something, if found reasonable in relation to their requirements.
Environmental Quality Survey
Date: 01/07/08 Time: 11:25am
Location: Harlesden
Description of Area: Buildings and shops tightly packed together.
1 2 3 4 5
The Pavement: Mostly bumpy and rough 3 Smooth
Cars: Many car 1 No cars
The amount of litter: Lots of Litter 3 No litter
Grass Verges: Wide Grass Verges 4 None
Trees: Many trees 3 No Trees
Air: polluted air 3 No Pollution
Building conditions: Very poor condition 2 Excellent Condition
The amount of noise: A lot of noise pollution 1 Quiet and peaceful
Street Lights: Badly Lit 4 brightly lit
Area Population: Dense 1 Sparse
The attractiveness of the area: Awful 1 Very good
Weather: cold and rainy 1 Bright and sunny
Amount of Vandalism: A lot 2 Not at all
Accessibility: horrible 2 exceptional
The natural environment: unpleasant 3 pleasant
Traffic congestion: Very high 5 no congestion
Total: 39
(Detailed Harlesden street view)
(Harlesden satellite view)
As stated earlier in my introduction the aim of my coursework is to investigation shopping patterns in Brent and is based on answering one fundamental question, 'is there a shopping hierarchy in Brent?' as well as several others, which I myself have chosen all relating to the investigation. The following are some of my finds from this investigation:
- The type of shopping centres in a particular given area.
- The type of consumers they are trying to attract.
- The kinds of goods they are selling for e.g. high order or low order goods.
- How a particular area affects consumers shopping trends, patterns and the sphere of influence.
These are my original questions for investigation.
Q1) Is there a shopping hierarchy in Brent?
It is evident that there is a shopping hierarchy in Brent because from the findings displayed on graph B3 of Brent South, it can be seen that 50% of the people I questioned said they spend over a £100 on their shopping whereas the Graph B3 of Harlesden shows that majority spend 11 to 50 pounds. This suggests that Brent South Retail Park has more high order comparison and specialist shops which are generally expensive compared to Harlesden which has a mixture of a few comparison and specialist shops such as peacocks and joy sleep for clothes and furnishing and there are many low order shop such as corner shops and news agents etc which sell Convenience goods like newspapers, bread, milk etc. The Brent South Retail Park has a bigger sphere of influence than Harlesden. This can be seen in the Graph B4 of Brent South which illustrates that there are some people who travel more than 10 miles while the graph B4 of Harlesden shows that all the people I questioned said they travelled within 10 mile radius of this shopping centre signifying that Brent South shopping Park has high order Products which attracts consumers from a long range. Harlesden can attract more customer by providing a cleaner environment and more comparison and specialist shops.
Q2) Does the internet affect shopping Centres? Why?
Yes, the internet does affect shopping centres in many ways. One of the ways is that more and more people have started using the internet for shopping which means that there are less customers go out to shopping centres to shop because this saves money and time by not travelling, cheaper deals on the net and able to make comparison between different sales – more variety on the net, able to browse through stocks which are not on display in stores, ultimately being more convenient etc. However not as much people shop online the reason could be unable to access the internet or unable to view the item up-close and personal for quality checking, e.g. garments often have to be felt for their texture and quality or have to be tried on for the perfect fit. This all can be seen in the results presented on graph B8. In order to solve this problem, the shopping centres can issue more advertisement boards on highways, lower their prices and make the environment cleaner to attract more customers.
Q3) Does the environment influence shopping patterns
The environment does influence shopping patterns because the findings discovered in Graph B6 of Brent South, we can see that 2/3 of the people said that the environment affects where they shop, this is probably because most people like to go for shopping to places where the environment is pleasant and welcoming e.g Brent South’s out of town location. So the more pleasant an environment is, the more Shoppers it will attract. If the environment is not pleasant, not many people would go there for e.g. Harlesden’s traffic peoblems. Another finding I discovered is that consumers are also
affected by the distance of the shopping centres from their residences. The closer a shopping centre is to a residential area the more accessible it will be for the consumers, which helps save time and money. But again most high order goods shops are often located in commercial areas away from residential areas, but often such high order goods, e.g. home furnishing, clothing and jewellery are not bought on a daily basis like convenience goods such as food and confectionery.
I have noticed on my visits to Harlesden that traffic congestion is one of the major issues faced by consumers, which often deters them, as it is very time consuming. I believe if a congestion charging zone is applied to this area on the main high road would ease the flow of traffic and people will start to use public transport more which will also help the environment by cutting down on CO2 emissions, thus improving the air quality. Underground car parking should be made so that the precious space along side the main highroad is not taken up by parked cars and thus can be used as a flowing lane, hence improving the flow of traffic.
A key issue for Harlesden is the need to improve the shopping and built environment. The centre is located within a Conservation Area, and contains some attractive buildings. However, these qualities are overshadowed by poorly designed shop fronts
and signage and a general lack of regard to good urban design. The setting of Harlesden’s attractive and visually prominent buildings should be enhanced.
In Brent South there isn’t any major problem as regards to accessibility, traffic or parking but it is certainly limited in the variety of shops that it has. The limitation of a variety of shops means that only selective consumer will come here and this area will not be attracting a broader range of consumers. A solution to this problem would be to introduce some other shops from leading brands such as debenhams and also have shops from cheaper brands such as Primark. A specialist cosmetics shop and a beauty saloon will also be an added bonus. This will help a broader spectrum of consumers and also attract budget conscious shoppers too, which in return provide a larger sphere of influence to the area.
Recently when I travelled to Brent South and Harlesden to get the answers for my coursework, I encountered a few problems such as rude people, windy weather etc which might have decreased the accuracy of my answers.
The strengths of my coursework are:
- I have graphs comparing Harlesden and Brent South to make my answers more reliable.
- I have a good range of questions which helps me find a more accurate answer for my investigation.
- The customers at both locations gave me good, reliable answers.
The weaknesses of my coursework are:
- The amount of people I asked was not so great. I could have asked a bigger amount to make my results more reliable.
- I could have also made up more questions to add to my questionnaire to also make my results more accurate.
- We had a restricted area of where to give out our questionnaire.
Questionnaire
Pros:
- I had included enough questions to get accurate answers without having to waste people time.
- Some customers took a great amount of time answering and giving reliable answers.
- Nearly all my graphs were made by obtaining results from the Questionnaire.
Cons:
- Many people were too busy to answer the questions on the questionnaire.
- Weather can easily influence the number of people who do the questionnaire.
- I had a restricted area of where to give out my questionnaire.
Improvement:
This method could have been improved by asking customers inside the actual shop instead of outdoors because more people would be willing to the questionnaire as the weather won’t be an issue. This may have made the customers less rushed giving me more reliable answers.
Another way of improving the questionnaire could be asking a bigger range of questions or a greater amount of customers being asked which will make my answers more reliable.
Pedestrian Counts
Pros:
- This helped me to find out which site has the largest concentration of pedestrians.
Cons:
- If I am the only one counting, it is possible that I may miss some
pedestrians.
- The weather can be a major issue affecting the number of pedestrians counted because people don’t like shopping on a rainy and cold day which unfortunately was present on the day of collection of my primary data giving unreliable answers.
Improvement:
Improvements could be made by carrying out this method at different times of day or week so I can easily compare them and make it trustworthy for example comparing results given on a week day with results given on a weekend.
Environmental Quality Survey
Pros:
- This method helped me to obtain and find out an average environmental quality score of the area and how well maintained each area is.
- I did two environmental quality surveys to find out an average score of the area
Cons:
- As time is always an issue, I was not able to go to all of the sites required.
Improvement:
I could have changed the scale from 1 to 5 to 1 to 10 for more for precision and spent more time on this method so I could take an environmental quality survey of at least five sites to find a mean score for more reliability. I also could have let the pedestrians score the environmental quality survey to learn about their opinion about the environment of that particular area.
I think my results are fairly accurate. I did not make any errors when collecting my data. If I repeated my investigation at a different time/season then my results may be different because of factors like the weather affects my results. If I did this investigation in summer there would be a lot more customers because they may be off from work. I think the same for my conclusion.
When evaluating my work I think it is a good idea to discuss the locations futures. The internet is becoming a huge industry with the amount of people shopping online increasing may put pressure on these shopping centres. In the future these shopping centres may have to be closed down due global warming.
The following are the websites I used to collect my secondary data:
: High Street Harlesden, Brent, London NW10, United Kingdom
: Brent Terrace, Barnet, London NW2, United Kingdom