When people go shopping, there are usually 2 types of things they buy:
Some items are cheap, and are bought very often (sometimes every day).
These are called LOW ORDER or CONVENIENCE goods.
Examples would be a newspaper, a pint of milk or a bar of chocolate.
Other items are expensive, and are bought less often, maybe only once a year. They are the sort of items that people ‘shop around’ for and compare prices and deals.
These are called HIGH ORDER or COMPARISON goods.
Examples would be things like furniture and electrical goods
MEADOWHALL
One trend has been the switch from town centre shopping to the development of large out of town shopping centres, which have sometimes involved the redevelopment of old industrial sites. One of the best examples of this is MEADOWHALL, which was built on the site of old steelworks and foundries in the Don Valley between Rotherham and Sheffield. It has its own website of course, which you can link to from the link aboveIt was also the focus of a recent article in 'The Observer'.
There's also an excellent image of the shopping centre, taken by David Rayner on GeographyPhotos.
There are plenty of useful details at the site of the MERRY HILL centre, near Oldbury in the West Midlands.
There are various retail studies that can be done: (see COURSEWORK page for more)
TRANSECT:
A useful resource to hunt out is the GOAD plan for your town or city. This shows retail ownership. These will date very quickly of course, but can still be used to show retail trends in a town: giving you the chance to investigate the turnover of certain types of shops, or in certain areas such as the 'zone of discard' in the more out of the way parts of the CBD (King's Lynn has plenty of these..)
We take our Year 7 groups out to a local neighbourhood shopping centre called GAYWOOD. This allows us to look at the different classification of SHOPS and SERVICES, and look at the ages of buildings and changes in occupancy since the previous year's survey - there are always changes even in this small area.
INTERNET RETAILING
There's a useful section on shopping in the GEOG DOT series of textbooks which we use. There's a section on how the Internet is competing with traditional shops. There are several store sites which you could visit to have a look at with groups and see how they try to get people to spend their money in ever more different ways.
SUPERMARKETS
