What are some of the characteristics of suburban retail?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: Suburban residential growth has fostered change in the distribution of consumer services. Historically, urban residents bought food and other daily necessities at small neighborhood shops in the midst of housing areas and shopped in the CBD for other products. CBD sales have stagnated because suburban residents won't make the long journey there. Instead, retailing has been increasingly concentrated in planned suburban shopping malls surrounded by generous parking lots. These nodes of consumer services are called edge cities.

Edge cities originated as suburban residences for people who worked in the central city, and then shopping malls were built to be near the residents. Edge cities now also serve as nodes of business services.

A shopping mall is built by a developer, who buys the land, builds the structures, and leases space to individual merchants. The key to a successful large shopping mall is the inclusion of one or more anchors. Most consumers go to a mall to shop at an anchor and, while there, patronize the smaller shops. The anchors may be a supermarket and discount store in a smaller mall and several department stores in a larger mall.