Car use,quality of parking and retail performance

The importance of the car on retail performance (turnover per square meter) is generally overestimated in literature. This is mainly due to a lack of differentiation between different types of retail areas with visitors who have different requirements for parking. On top of that most literature is focussing on the quantity and price of parking and neglect the effect of quality of parking. Therefore this thesis will research these two subjects. At first a differentiation between different type of retail areas, such as city centres and rural areas, will give an insight in the modal split of retail areas in the Randstad agglomeration. This differentiation will show that the car has only a minority stake in the modal split for city centres of bigger cities in the Randstad agglomeration. The car has a higher share in the modal split for rural areas. However, when the modal share of the car is compared with retail performance there is no evidence of a relation. A second focus in this thesis is the quality of parking. The quality of parking does have an influence on the performance of retail areas. This thesis finds evidence that the quantity of parking has no substantial influence on the performance of retail areas where the quality of parking does have a substantial influence.