Comparing trade areas of technology centres using ‘Geographical Information Systems’

Advances in geographical information systems have contributed to location and marketing design strategies on the part of retailers. The techniques used in this field are based on delimiting trade areas and spatial analysis. The same approach is applied in this study to technology centres, which are considered as suppliers of knowledge-intensive services to their associated firms. The research objective focuses on analysing the spatial distribution of firms associated with two technology centres from different sectors. The results indicate that firms associated with a technology centre present spatial patterns that are similar to those observed in retailing, while significant differences were also found between the two technology centres used for the study.