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The randomness involved in choosing the location is due to the fact the customer may not
be able to discriminate among choices of facilities perfectly specially when the perceived
difference among alternative choices are small. Customers may also be uncertain as to true
conditions associated with the fulfillment of shopping expectations at various alternative
facilities. To capture this kind of randomness and to consider all the facilities it is always
better to utilize the concept of relative utility of a location and probability of choosing that
facility.
STEP 2: Utility of a shopping facility j perceived by the customer base i.
The customer is unaware about the fact that to what extent any facility will meet his or her
requirements. But a customer does have a prior knowledge of the probability that various
shopping facilities might satisfy his or her shopping demands. Moreover, greater the
number and variety of products carried by a facility, the greater is the customers
expectation that his visit to the facility will be successful. We can term this concept as the
size of facility that the customer will be attracted more for large size of facility
j
S
ij j
U S
The utility of a facility is also influenced by the effort and expenses incurred by the
customer for traveling to alternative facility location in the form of transportation costs.
Hence, utility for any facility is inversely proportional to the time spent in traveling from
customer base to the facility (dependent on the distance). At the same time we should
incorporate the differences in terms of customers willingness to travel to various distances
for different types of products, which can be accounted for with the distance exponent .
So , we can say that
1
ij
ij
U
T
We can write
j
ij
ij
S
U
T
=
The probability a customer from customer base i traveling to a given facility j can be
written as
1
1
ij
ij n
ij
j
ij
n
j
ij
j
U
p
U
Sj
T
or
S
T
=
=
=
=
Step 3: Expected number of customer from region I to visit facility j
We can find the expected number of customers from a customer base region i visiting to
facility j, E
ij
, by multiplying the number of customers at I, C
i
, with the probability that
customers from I will select j for shopping p
ij
Hence, .
ij ij i
E p C =
Step 4: Expected average annual expenditures by customers
The total sales for a given facility will depend also on the annual expenditures to be spent
at a facility for particular product. So, the expected average annual expenditures A for a
given product k (k=1, 2.p) by the customers from region i at facility j is determined as
.
ijk ij ik
A E B =
Where B
ik
is the average annual amount budgeted B by customers at i for a given product
k.
Summing A
ijk
for all m customer regions for each product k will give the total expected
annual sales for a given facility. Deducting operating costs from sales revenues will give
total net profit.
Example:
A retailer wants to locate a supermarket in a city with 5 customer zones with different
demand densities located with coordinates give below in table. The distance is in
Kilometers.
TABLE 6.7: DEMAND DENSITIES OF ALL CUSTOMER ZONES
Customer
zones (i)
Coordinates of
customers zones (x
i
, y
i
)
Demand
density at i
1 (2,3) 7000
2 (1,4) 1000
3 (3,1) 2000
4 (3,5) 3000
5 (4,1) 5000
There is one competitor already located at (2, 2). Retailer wish to explore two more sites at
(3, 2) and at (3, 3) with double the capacity of competitor to be at (3, 3) with double the
capacity for supermarket.
Assume =2 for convenience stores. Lets consider that retailer wants to maximize the sale
of womens dress material for which customers can have annual amount of budget of Rs
500. Which site will fetch more expected sales and maximum net profits? Consider the
operating costs are double for two potential sites than the competitor. Locate the
coordinates of customer zones 1,,5 as shown in Figure 6.23. The competitors location is
represented by A, R1 and R2 are two potential sites out of which the retailer has to choose
one. Retailer also wants to know whether locating at either R1 or R2 will be profitable over
competitor A.
FIGURE 6.23: LOCATION OF CUSTOMER ZONES
We can assume metropolitan metric for calculating distance. In metropolitan metric the
customer can take turns only at right angles (90
o
) only.
We will first determine the travel distance from each customer region A, R1 and R2 as
determined in Table 6.8
TABLE 6.8: TRAVEL DISTANCE FROM CUSTOMER REGION TO SITE
Site(i,j)
Travel distance in km(T
ij
)
Customer region(i)
1 2 3 4 5
R1 2 3 1 3 1
R2 1 2 2 2 3
A 1 2 2 4 3
Now we will find the utility U
ij
perceived by i=1...5 for facility j=R1, R2 and A as given in
table 6.9. The size of A will be taken as 1 and for R1 and for R2, it can be taken as 2.
TABLE 6.9: UTILITY PERCEIVED BY CUSTOMERS
Uij
Site(j)
Customer region(i)
1 2 3 4 5
R1(size=2) 2/2
2
=0.5 2/3
2
=0.22 2/1
2
=2 2/3
2
=0.22 2/2
2
=0.5
R2(size=2) 2/1
2 =
2 2/2
2
=0.5 2/2
2
=0.5 2/2
2
=0.5 2/3
2
=0.22
A(size=1) 1/1
2 =
1 1/2
2
=0.25 1/2
2
=0.25 1/4
2
=0.06 1/3
2
=0.11
Total 3.5 0.97 2.75 0.78 0.83
We will use the utility to find the probability of a customer i travelling to R1, R2 and A as
given in Table 6.10.
TABLE 6.10: PROBABILITY OF CUSTOMERS TRAVELLING TO SITES
Site(j) p
ij
Customer region(i)
1 2 3 4 5
R1 0.5/3.5=0.143 0.22/0.97=0.227 2/2.75 0.22/0.78 0.5/0.83
R2 2/3.5=0.571 0.5/0.97 0.5/2.75 0.5/0.78 0.22/0.83
A 1/3.5=0.285 0.25/0.97 0.25/2.75 0.06/0.78 0.11/0.83
Expected number of customers E
ij
will be determined below in Table 6.11.
TABLE 6.11: EXPECTED NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS VISITING SITES
Site
(j)
E
ij
Customer region(i)
1 2 3 4 5
R1 1001 227 1454 846 3010
R2 3997 515 364 1923 795
A 1995 258 182 231 665
For k to be womens dress material monthly total expected revenues generated at R1, R2
and A are given in Table 6.12.
TABLE 6.12: MONTHLY TOTAL EXPECTED REVENUES FOR DIFFERENT
ITEMS
Site
(j)
A
ijk
(in Rs)
Monthly
Total
Customer region(i)
1 2 3 4 5
R1 100100 22700 145400 84600 301000 653800
R2 399700 51500 36400 192300 79500 759400
A 199500 25800 18200 23100 66500 333100
So, we can see that the location R2 (3, 3) will generate more revenues, hence retailer can
locate the supermarket at (3, 3).