How Attractive is a Shop: A Fuzzy-Expert System

AbstractProfessional planners of shopping centres know that intangible factors of a shop, including product type, quality, variety, pricing, branding, and image, are all vital in determining the pedestrian flow into the shop. These intangible factors cannot be easily quantified. Yet by experience, professional planners know how to assess them, and hence assign different shops to different strategic locations within a shopping centre, in order to optimize pedestrian flow. The objective of this study is to model experts’ professional judgment on these intangible factors. A model combining a fuzzy expert system and regression is found capable of predicting pedestrian flow at reasonable accuracies. By fine tuning the location of potential tenants, using an integrated simulation model, it is possible to optimise the shopping centre’s rental performance, even at the early stage of the shopping centre design.