One important way monopolistically competitors differentiate their products is by location - Essay Example

Location Retail Strategies John Campbell in the article time to shop: the geography of retailing (Campbell 6) s that shopping trends of most consumers have a need of saving time, convenience and even pleasure while shopping. As such, they consider the location of their shopping areas. With such considerations, trends of shopping have evolved in majorly and location of shopping areas contributes a lot to this shift. This essay seeks to explain how retailers have used locational strategies of attracting consumers to their establishments.

Retailers have adopted strategies based on location as a means of expanding their establishments. One such strategy involves locating shopping areas, influenced by vacation trends of consumers. Such retailers establish shopping areas either at central areas of consumer’s trip or in vacation destinations. This locational strategy has been successful to the retailers. In the short term, retailers have increased sales during the vacation times. This is because consumers who have made vacation trips prefer doing their shopping at central points of their trip (Campbell 8).

On the other hand, considering a long-term strategy, particularly when several factory retail outlets cluster together in an area, they become an attraction to shoppers. Such clusters are popular since this form of vacation retail is enjoyable to the consumers. It can be because many consumers usually treat themselves with shopping when travelling than when at home.Another retail strategy based on location involves the providence of convenience to consumers. This is in particular to urban centers where shopping is an activity to compete with other activities.

As such, there is the need to save on time by the consumers (Campbell 9). Retail areas close in terms of location often have those goods in high demand such as liquor or video stores. However, also based on convenience, for other exotic goods, consumers prefer areas with clusters of stores. Such areas thus have high traffic flow in terms of consumers. In the short term, this strategy of situating shopping areas in the most convenient areas beams of success because consumers want value for their time and it enables them to shop for related items in the same area.

This strategy will succeed in the long term. This can be related to the convenience created by clusters of shopping stores in various areas. Consumers prefer such areas since they will get goods they need all in one trip. It also helps to avoid the hustle of comparing goods for infrequent but costly purchases.Work citedCampbell, John. “Time to Shop: The Geography of Retailing”. Federal Reserve of Boston,19 Jul. 1996.Web. 4 Nov. 2011.