Geog. 361. THE ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
QUESTIONS FROM MID-TERM HOUR EXAMINATIONS
Covers through Spring, 1997; more recently used ones are toward the
bottom
Answer fifty points worth of questions.
Responses to more than the assigned number of points will be scaled downward
proportionally.
Thus, if you attempt sixty points worth of questions and successfully answer
forty your recorded score will be twenty-two ((50/60)*50=33.3).
Your time likely will have been better spent concentrating on the specified
number of questions.
When you are finished, write your name on this exam, encircle the
numbers of the questions you chose to answer (and want me to grade) and
submit it with your responses.
Quest. No.; Point Value; Question or Challenge
- 10 pts. What do market analysts implicitly assume when they employ
Thiessen polygons?
What problems do they confront reconciling real-word data and the
geographies according to which they are collected with these simplistic
spatial constructs?
- 10 pts. How is the economic notion of "demand" translated into
expected sales in landscape contests?
- 10 pts. What differences might one see between operations of
independent retailers and operations of franchises offering similar
assortments of goods?
- 10 pts. In what ways does consumer behavior influence locational
decisions of retailers?
- 10 pts. How might regional growth of population and/or income influence
location decisions by retailers?
What are the likely impacts on landscapes of rising consumer demand?
- 10 pts. The authors discuss "retail hierarchies."
What are they, and how are they related to "urban hierarchies?"
- 10 pts. Justify the following retailing innovations: 1)$supermarket;
2)$department store; 3)$shopping center.
- 10 pts. Under what circumstances might retailers seek "geographical
monopolies?"
How does that locational decision differ from those of operators
practicing "monopolistic competition?"
Why are they different?
- 10 pts. Describe the geographic arrangement of sales likely to be
generated within concentric annuli centered on an isolated vender.
Assuming the hypothetical landscape developed in class, account for that
pattern in terms of varying annular populations and consumer demand as
reflected by anticipated numbers of sales to residents of each annulus.
- 8 pts. What consequences has the several-decade-long trend toward
dispersal of urban populations had on retail patterns in North American
cities?
- 6 pts. How do scale economies and prices of goods interact to determine
venders' profitabilities?
- 10 pts. Woodfield Mall has a very thoughtfully designed floor plan.
Prior to the arrival of Nordstrom's its four major "anchors" (Sear's (S),
Marshall Field's (MF), Lord and Taylor (L&T) and Penny's (P) occupied key
locations at ends of perpendicularly intersecting hallways (illustrated
below).
L&T
|
|
S---------------+------------P
|
MF
Dozens of smaller, specialty stores (mens'/womens'/children's clothing, jewelry
and accessories, books, toys, etc.) are strung along the major halls connecting
them.
Justify such a pattern of store locations.
How does that arrangement differ from the usual geography of retailing in a
major metropolitan center?
- 6 pts. What role is played by grain-eleveator operators and other
collectors of agricultural produce in the context of central place theory?
How does their presence influence the geometry of settlement patterns in
rural landscapes?
- 10 pts. How does changing mobility influence consumer behavior?
How might it benefit some retail operators (and who might they be) while
hurting others (and who might they be)?
How might increasing mobility for society as a whole affect the "mobility
challenged" (and who might they be)?
- 8 pts. Describe the development and use of a "site-ranking scheme" for
site-selection decision making.
What sorts of variables might be taken into account?
What is the purpose of weighting observations on the selected variables?
How might those weights be manipulated by development/operations multipliers?
How are the developed site rankings employed?
- 8 pts. Below is the outcome of a "stepwise regression analysis" of
numerous site and situation variables included in a study of store
performance by a convenience-store chain.
Central city sites
Y = $5,792 + 34.45a - 32.33b - 351.11c + 176.29d
where: Y = weekly sales; coefficients of determination in parentheses
a = percentage apartments within 1/2 mile (0.297)
b = percentage customers who are pedestrians (0.523)
c = car accessibility (0.658)
d = number of competitors with three blocks (0.693)
Interpret these results.
- 4 pts. In class, Prof. T. commented that the coefficients for the
last two terms in the above predictive equation seemed counter intuitive,
but after further reflection thinks that that outcome might not be so
unreasonable.
Justify his change of mind by describing a neighborhood or community
environment in which these four "most important" contributing independent
variables might receive the coefficients shown above.
- 8 pts. The "gravity model" has shown up in one form or another in
chapters 4, 9 (the Huff model) and 11 (the spatial interaction model).
What are the basic elements of these models and of what use are they to
understanding the retail environment?
- 6 pts. In what ways do chain operations differ from independent
retailers?
- 1 pt. ea. Define or identify in the context of this course:
a) central place b) gravity model c) census tract
d) demand schedule e) convenience goods f) market penetration
g) margin h) oligopoly i) generative activity
j) spatial monopoly k) vacuum method l) threshold population
m) planned shopping center
- 1 ea. Define and/or identify in the context of this course:
a) fixed price good b) central business district
c) threshold of demand d) bid-rent curve
e) circulation hinterland f) desire line
g) situation h) distance decay function
i) Thiessen polygon j) decision tree