Accessibility of Foodstores – A Case Study

Abstract

Trends in food retailing in Britain suggest that the industry is restructuring. Groups such as J. Sainsbury, Tesco, Safeway and Asda are increasingly concentrating their efforts on opening new, large stores; usually superstores but, occasionally, hypermarkets. There is the increasing likelihood, then, that two or more such large stores will become rivals for the same shopper catchment area. A detailed examination of shopping behaviour in an area where the clear choice is between a superstore and a hypermarket is presented. Key measures of accessibility such as car ownership licence‐holding, car availability and bus availability are examined in order to highlight the spatial implications of this restructuring process.