A Taxonomy of Data and Software Tools for Geo-Spatial Analysis of Town and City Centre Retail Space

One of the characteristics of a healthy town centre is the presence of a vibrant retail offer and low vacancy rates. Not all town centres are dominated by retail outlets, however, the importance of retailing to the socio-economic wellbeing of town centres (places and people) and national developments cannot be overemphasized (Dixon, 2007; Oshea, 2017). Despite the increasing consumer preference for online retailing, market share of in-store (bricks & mortar) retailing is still well above 70% (ONS, 2017). In other words, shoppers still like to visit shops, they just don’t necessarily carry out transactions at the till. Although the nature of retailing continues to change, retail outlets and town and city centres alike, remain reliant on the footfall and spending characteristics of shoppers. Key to understanding this situation, is discerning, and then interpreting, the various existing data sets and software tools that can be used to measure and analyse retail space performance. This article sheds light on this situation by exploring existing datasets in the UK – its final output is a taxonomy of retail relevant data and software packages. This output can be used as a reference for anyone considering measuring and analysing performance of town and city centre retail spaces using geo-spatial techniques