The shopping centre in the High Street is of high order than the shopping centre along the Oxford Road from the police headquarters to the roundabout (South Kidlington)

The difference between high order and low order shops:

 

 It is noted that high order shops are shops that sell goods with high price such as jewellery and furniture, people do not usually visit them and people need to travel a long distance to reach them.

                                                       Geog course work P.2

Sphere of influence:

Questionnaire setting

As I need to find out whether the shopping centre in the High Street area of Kidlington is of higher order than the shopping centre along the Oxford Road from the police headquarters to the roundabout (South Kidlington), I am going to conduct a questionnaire survey of the people who shop there and to find out the average price of goods as well.

Here are the questions my group plan to ask the shoppers:

    --- How far have they travelled for their shopping?

    --- How did they get there?

    --- How often do they shop there?

    --- Where do they do most of their shopping?

    --- How many shops do they go to?

    --- Is there a good range of goods and facilities?

 

Data Collection

a) Division of labour

There were six members in our group. First of all, we designed some questions which we would be going to ask the shoppers. Then we

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divided ourselves into two teams, three in each team. One of the team went to the South Kidlington while the other team went to High Street alternatively at the same time. We had to do the questionnaire survey and field sketches every time we went. We picked the customers at random when we were doing the questionnaire survey. We chose three shops each to represent high, middle and low order shop in both High Street and South Kidlington.

The role I played in the team was to do the questionnaire survey and field sketch of a middle order shop in high Street. When we did our questionnaire survey, we used a closed question method and we also used the comparing technique for both area.

b) Results on questions answered

1. How far did you travel?    

2. How did you get there?

3) How often do they shop there?

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4) Where do they do most of their shopping?

5) How many shops do they go to?

6) Is there a good range of goods and facilities?

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C) Illustration of data

                                                            Fig.1

Fig.2

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Fig.3

Fig.4

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Fig.5

Fig.6

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Fig.7

Fig.8

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Fig.9

Fig.10

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Analysis

   After data collection, I have transformed the results on questions answered by the shoppers and shops visited into pie charts and bar charts for easy and clear illustrations.

1. Analyse by order shop allocation

From Map 2, I have visited all shops totally 21 in South Kidlington. I marked them in red, green, and blue colour for high, middle, and low order shops respectively. I found that out of those 21 shops, there are 12 high order shops.

From Map 3, I have visited all shops totally 41 in High Street. Again I marked them in red, green, and blue colour for high, middle, and low order shops respectively. I found that out of those 41shops, there are 12 shops are of high order.

As I could see from the data, there is a wider range of high order shops in South Kidlington than in High Street. Therefore South Kidlington could be named as high order shopping area.

2. Analyse by distance factor.

As I know that if people travel to the shopping center for a shorter distance, it is said to be of low order. I have asked 24 shoppers in each area.

From Fig.1, there are 7 people marking 29% who travelled under 1 mile to shop in South Kidlington but in High Street there are 13 persons marking 54%.

On the other hand, from Fig.2, in South Kidlington, there are 17 people covering 71% who travelled 1 mile or over to shop but in High Street, there are 11 people covering only 46%.

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In compare with the above percentages and facts, I recognise that more people travel to High Street to shop with a shorter distance than the people travel to shop in South Kidlington, thus indicates again that the shopping area in South Kidlington is of higher order than that in High Street.

3. Analyse by frequency factor.

From Fig.5 and Fig.6, I can clearly see that 14 people out of 24 shop daily in High Street. However, there are just only 4 people out of 24 shop daily in South Kidlington.

Therefore by looking at frequency factor, shops in High Street are definitely low order and shops in South Kidlington are obviously high.

Limitation

   There are several limitations when doing this coursework..

1. As I went out to conduct the questionnaire survey during school lessons, so they were all within weekdays and at very short period of time in the daytime. It seriously affected the result that I concluded.

   

2. The questionnaire survey was only based on 48 people. The reason was that there were only 6 people in my group and the time given to collect data was not enough. However we needed to conduct the questionnaire survey and do some field sketched, so we could only manage to contact few people at one time and this might cause inappropriate conclusion.

     

 

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Conclusion

Summing up my analysis from different points of view ranging from by order shop allocation, by distance factor and by frequency factor, all of them point out that South Kidlington falls into the category of being a high order shopping area. As the evidence reflects in all my analysis were in contradiction with the statement –“The shopping centre in the High Street area of Kidlington is of higher order than the shopping centre along the Oxford Road from the police headquarters to the roundabout (South Kidlington). Therefore according to my survey and based on my analysis I would like to draw my conclusion that the shopping centre along the Oxford Road from the police headquarters to the roundabout is in fact of higher order than the shopping centre in the High Street area of Kidlington.  

          I recognised that Sainsbury’s was built in South Kidlington ten years ago drawing more shoppers to walk a longer distance to shop in the area. And as Sainsbury’s is a big supermarket selling wide range of daily necessities thus drives out many low order shops. That is the reason why there are less low order shops in there now and it shaped what a different picture of today making South Kidlington into a high order shopping area.

         However if I had a second chance to do the course again I would like to conduct the survey at different periods of the day and not only conducting on weekdays but have to include Saturdays, Sundays and holidays as well. I should also have to put in more time and manpower to ask more shoppers and get a wider shoppers’ coverage, then I think the result would be more accurate and appropriate to the fact.

         In doing my survey and analysis, I have used pie charts and bar charts illustrations, comparison skills and close questionnaire technique.

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