A systematic approach to location selection for shopping mall projects

Abstract

China is a country which has been developed very quickly since beginning of 90s. Especially, it has got a remarkable increasing investment in real estate industry because of the rapid growth of economy and the demand of higher living standard from the growing population. Shopping mal development has become one of hottest point in real estate investment project. Location selection is the first stage of decision making in any investment projects. This particularly true to a shopping mall development project. How to choose a right place to develop a right project is the key decision for shopping mall project investments. However, it is still a difficult problem to scientifically select a suitable location. The thesis starts by providing an overview of location selection methods, methods for shopping mal location selection, the analytical network processing method (ANP), and the Geographical Information System (GIS) were also reviewed. Based on the review of current methods for location selection, this study selected and integrated the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and the ANP (Analytic Network Process) to develop a method for solving location selection problems. A GIS (Geographic Information System) based location selection system was implemented to test the location selection method. A shopping mall selection problem was chosen to illustrate the usefulness of the location selection system developed in this study.