In the Burgess model of a city Meadowhall is situated on the outer circle which represents the outer suburban area. Most posh and big houses are built here along with industrial estates and modern shopping centres. Sheffield CBD is located in the inner circle where shops and offices are found.
Shops can be placed into a hierarchy based upon the services they provide. At the bottom of the hierarchy are small shops selling low order goods, At the top are shops selling high order goods. A shopping hierarchy puts shopping centres in order of importance. I have made a diagram of a shopping hierarchy below.
Sheffield CBD to be 2nd to the top of the hierarchy as it is a city centre. Meadowhall would be at the top of the hierarchy, as Meadowhall is an out of town shopping centre. Meadowhall is a higher order shopping centre and would sell comparison goods. Sheffield CBD is a high order centre but lower than Meadowhall selling more convenience goods. These goods are cheap and would need a lower threshold population, i.e. lower number of customer’s needed to make a profit. However because it is near the top of the hierarchy I would expect Sheffield CBD to sell Comparison goods as well.
Bar graphs to show the different types of shops at meadowhall and Sheffield CBD.
The graph for Meadowhall shows that there are more shops that sell comparison goods compared to Sheffield CBD. Also Meadowhall offers more specialist shops such as hairdressers and health and beauty. One thing I noticed from the graph is that Meadowhall did not have any job agencies where as Sheffield CBD
had 1.
The graph for Sheffield CBD shows that it had the similar number of shops as Meadowhall. One thing I noticed was that there were more banks and newsagents in Sheffield CBD. There were more shops selling convenience goods. However there were 3 empty shops or under construction where as in Meadowhall I did not notice
A shopping hierarchy puts shopping centres in order of importance. High order shops have more shops selling specialist/luxury and comparison goods. Comparison goods are things which people do not buy often and where style and prices can be compared. For example: Clothes, shoes. Also high order shopping centres have department stores and chain stores whereas Low order centres don’t have any.
Low order centres have more shops selling convenience goods and may have shops providing more services: hairdressers, video hire and estate agents e.t.c
From my two graphs I can analyse that Shoppers would prefer Meadowhall as it is a higher order centre than Sheffield CBD and provides customers with the best choice of things to buy. It has more number of shops that sell comparison goods so if they wanted to buy something special for an occasion they would have a bigger variety of choice. Also Meadowhall would be better for retailers as they could make more profit whereas in Sheffield CBD the amount of profit would not be that high as there would not be as many customers. As we did not have enough time we only concentrated on a small are of each centre. To get more reliable results we would compare whole area.
Meadowhall
Sheffield CBD
From the bar graphs we can clearly identify that Meadowhall has a higher quality of shops and environment than Sheffield CBD. This proves that the theory that the success of out of town shopping centres has been because they are better for shoppers and retailers than traditional shopping centres. An attractive building and neighbourhood would benefit both retails and customers. Customers would want to shop at that place because it looks more respectable and retailers would benefit because of this. Also the bigger the size of the car park the more customers the centre will attract. A few things we can analyse from the graph is that Sheffield CBD has a highest rating of 7 for delivery area whereas Meadowhall has a highest rating of 9 for 3 of the things. Altogether the rating is out of 100. Meadowhall scored 92 whereas Sheffield CBD had much lower at just 33 out of 100.
The ease of access for disabled shoppers in Meadowhall is very up to date and reliable. Lifts, shop mobility and disabled toilets allows disabled people to go where they want and still travel in ease. In Sheffield CBD there are no disabled facilities. This is one of the reasons why the great success of out of town shopping centres like Meadowhall has been because they are much better for both shoppers and retailers than traditional shopping centres like Sheffield CBD. These facilities provided encourage shoppers to go there.
There are many facilities provided in Meadowhall for shoppers. They include: baby changing room facilities, smoking area, children’s play area, First aid, push chair hire, and many more. In Sheffield CBD I did not notice any facilities. These facilities provided may be one of the reasons why success of out of town shopping centres has been. Facilities such as children’s play area allow parents to carry on doing the shopping whilst children enjoy themselves.
Ease of access for the retailers and shoppers at Meadowhall was very easy. The fact that there are various car parks allows them to park there car where it is most easy for them. Whereas the car park in Sheffield CBD is quite far away. Also Meadowhall has lifts, stairs, escalators and benches which enables the customers more ease. In Sheffield CBD I only noticed benches and so the ease of access for shoppers is not as great as Meadowhall.
Meadowhall
Sheffield CBD
From my line graph I can identify that the main reason shoppers prefer Meadowhall than Sheffield CBD is that it is easy to access by car whereas Sheffield CBD is easy to access by public transport. Shoppers thought there was wider variety of shops in Meadowhall that Sheffield CBD. But in my opinion and from the data I collected I think that Meadowhall has a wider variety of shops. The main reason shoppers preferred Meadowhall is that it is easy to access.
The majority of the shoppers who came to Meadowhall travelled by car. This links with my line graph above which shows that Customers preferred Meadowhall as it is easy to access by car. There is a greater number of people who used the public transport to get to Sheffield CBD. This also links with my line graph above which shows that customers preferred Sheffield CBD as it is easier to access by public transport. Also from my pie graphs I noticed that the most common transport shoppers used to get to Meadowhall was by car whereas in Sheffield CBD customers used a more different variety of transport. I think the reason more shoppers travelled by car to Meadowhall is that it is much easier and quicker by car than public transport.
In Meadowhall I did my Pedestrian count outside house of Fraser and in Sheffield CBD I did it outside Boots. My bar graph shows that within the 5 minutes of all the pedestrians I counted 137 people went past Boots in Sheffield CBD and 73 people went past house of Fraser in Meadowhall. In my opinion I thought there would be a greater number of people that went past house of Fraser in Meadowhall. I think the reason for this is that I carried both the counts out at different times, the Meadowhall one in the afternoon and the Sheffield one in the morning and so this could be the reason for a grater number of Pedestrian in Sheffield CBD. The reason for this I think is that people who would be working in the afternoon went to do some quick shopping before they went to work .To make sure I got more accurate results I could have done the count for longer as five minutes is not long enough. Also if I carried it out at the same time it would have been more reliable.
The sphere of influence for Sheffield CBD shows that customers did not travel that far. The furthest was from Leeds which is 50km from Sheffield CBD where as the furthest for Meadowhall was 85km which was Richmond. Sheffield only attracted people from 10 surrounding places whereas Meadowhall attracted customers from 23 different places.
From these sphere of influence it is obvious that Meadowhall is much more popular with customers.
Conclusion
I have come to a conclusion that I think that the great success of out of town shopping centres like Meadowhall has been because they are much better for both shoppers and retailers than traditional shopping centres like Sheffield CBD. From all the information I have collected and put together it is evident that customers prefer shopping centres as they generally have higher standards of facilities are easier to access, have a much more pleasant environment, provide shoppers with a bigger range of choice and offer more amenities. 4 out of 5 graphs I have displayed support the theory that out of town shopping centres are better. However one of my graphs does not support that theory. In my pedestrian count I found that within the 5 minutes I timed more people went past a certain place in Sheffield CBD. I think the logic behind this is that it depends on the time and so it is not reliable. Out of town shopping centres are much better for retailers as well as the centres attract much more customers and so the retailers can benefit from this as the threshold population is much higher. So in my opinion I think Meadowhall is better than Sheffield CBD.
I could have improved my study by trying a different approach to things. For example in the pedestrian count I could have timed for longer as 5 minutes is not reliable. This may have produced different results. In addition to this I could have interviewed some retailers and ask them why they thought shopping centres are much more popular.
