Progress of Geographical Study on Producer Services in Western Countries

Since 1980s, the rapid urban and regional economic development in the West has brought the research on producer services to the focus of attention. Many subjects have taken part in those researches, and geography is one important embranchment, which focusing on the spatial attributes of the producer services. On the basis of introduction of concept and classification of producer services, this article tries to give a systematic and critical review of literatures on the geographical research on producer services in West from five aspects as follows: first, the causes of rapid growth of producer services in West, in this part, the author pay more attention to introduce the research on extemalization of producer services;second,research on the role of produce services in regional and urban development;third,research on the inter- urban distribution of producer services and location of produce services within cities;fourth,research on spatial behavior of producer services, which include two parts:factors of location choice and networks of producer services enterprises;and fifth,research on relationship between global cities and producer services. The characteristics of the geographical study on producer services in West in past decade can be summarized as follows: 1) Since research on producer services is so young a study, geographers involved in it have felt that they could not take a more general theory on service activities as their theoretical foundation,many theories from relevant disciplines have been introduced to geographers to have a general understanding;2) Statistic multianalysis has been used by geographers to research producer services in the early, and with the development of behavioural geography, behavioral method becomes one of the main research methods; 3) The contents of geographical research on producer services have kept up with the development of information technology and economic globalization.