Retail planning of Shenzhen : a case study of Nanshan district

Abstract

Retail industry is prosperously developing in recent years with the marketization undergoing in China. According to Ministry of Commerce, the average growth rate of total retail sales has reached 16.3% from 2008-2013, ranking the second in the world in terms of the overall amount (People News, 2013). Driven by market forces to a larger extent, retail activities take places in CBDs, district centers, neighborhoods, etc., wherever exhibits business opportunities. So as to better manage and supervise the rapidly growing retail market, retail planning has been introduced in many Chinese cities by the local authority gradually. However, apart from the ambiguous macroscopic control on the overall quantity of retail development, the guidance on actual spatial distribution of retail facilities are relatively insufficient, which fails to maximize the overall utility to some degree.

Besides, in many developed countries and cities such as UK and Hong Kong, retail market has been operated sophisticatedly under the guidance of the government. In this sense, a more comprehensive and specific retail control mechanism may be able to better cope with the problems that brought by the soaring retail developments in Chinese cities. Thus, retail planning systems in London and Hong Kong as well as related theories and retail models are worth investigating to derive the analytical framework for the whole study.

As a fast-developing city, Shenzhen is always as a pioneer in institutional innovation. The study of Shenzhen may provide valuable experiences for other Chinese cities in near future. In order to be more specifically, the author has chosen Nanshan District, Shenzhen, which has embraced relatively advanced retail market in China, as the case for further detailed study. Primarily, an evaluation of current retail conditions of different hierarchies in terms of quality and quantity in Nanshan District is carried out through statistical review, site survey, questionnaire surveys, etc., and simultaneously the Hong Kong Expenditure-Based Retail Model is used. Through the assessment, it could be easily to find out that larger-scale shopping facilities are oversupplied while shopping spaces for neighborhoods are relatively insufficient, showing unbalanced spatial developments as well.

Lastly, based on the previous research, potential retailing strategies in terms of quantity and quality as well as spatial development are derived to facilitate developments of different hierarchical retail facilities in the face of the future market trends and threats under online shopping, requiring cooperation between the government, consumers, developers and relevant stakeholders.