Gravity Models Revisited: From Theory to Practice

International audienceIn classical operational research facility location models such as the p-center problem (Locating p facilities and assigning the closest possible clients to them in order to minimize the maximum distance between a facility and its assigned clients), it is assumed that the clients always prefer to choose the closest facilities in order to receive their desired services. This assumption might be the most appropriate for locating fire stations or hospitals for instance, but is not always the case for locating retail or commercial centers, as clients behave according to a gravity-based formula to choose among different competing facilities. As the result in this paper mathematical modeling modifications both from the customers and managers perspectives have been suggested in order to create more realistic location models which are consistent with consumer behavior and social sciences studies. This will lead to mixed integer nonlinear mathematical programming problems