An agent-based model of consumer mobility in a retail environment

In a retail environment it is nowadays crucial to take into account recent trends and evolutions in consumer mobility behaviour in order to align the actual implementation of operations management decisions with the company's consumer-centric strategy. We aim to bridge the discrepancy between the assumptions behind the analysis for supply side decisions and the modelling of the demand side mobility behaviour that still exists in theory. With an agent-based approach to consumer spatial behaviour we study the impact of increasing mobility of consumers on the logistical strategy of retailers. In an artificially generated world imitating the spatial configuration of a big city, we study different scenarios about consumer mobility. We focus on the impact of commuting behaviour and on the resulting effect of different cognitive maps that influence a consumer's store choice. We do not only study the model's numerical results but also throw a look on the spatial outcome. The main result is that we provide greater insight in emerging retail location patterns as a result of changing consumer spatial behaviour and that this interplay between consumer mobility and location strategies can be thoroughly studied with an agent-based modelling and simulation approach.