City Retailers’ Perceptions of Competition: A Choice Experiment

The increase and expansion of out-of-town shopping centres is often criticized for out-competing retail business within city centres. City retailers’ own perceptions of competition within and between retail districts are here analyzed via choice experiments in the city of Gävle, Sweden. Choice experiments allow qualitative data to be transformed into quantitative data that can then be analyzed using statistical techniques. The results indicate that city retailers in general perceived a competitive threat within rather than between retail districts. Thus, city retailers do not seem to share policymakers’ concerns that out-of-town shopping centres out-compete retail business within city centres. This implies that city retailers either are naive, or that policy makers tend to overestimate the competitive threat, from out-of-town shopping centres.