Formulation and Test of a Normative Model for the Spatial Allocation of Grocery Expenditures by a Dispersed Population

In this study a model is developed and tested to describe the selection of major grocery purchase towns by a dispersed population. The information used was from a questionnaire taken to the approximately 600 households which comprised an areally stratified random sample of the Iowa dispersed population in 1960. The model uses the concept, developed in the work, of an indifference surface of town attractiveness indices to predict consumer town selection. The test of the model leads to the conclusion that consumer spatial expenditure patterns for grocery purchases can be better predicted by this model than the alternate assumptions of central place theory, and that the search routine employed in the model is a more suitable basis for explaining these spatial patterns than the multiple regression techniques which have recently been in vogue.