Creating a GIS Application for Retail Facilities Planning in Jeddah City

Problem statement: The aim of this study is to create a GIS application for retail facilities planning in Saudi Arabia. Jeddah city has been selected as a case study representing a major commercial city in Saudi Arabia. Approach: The crated application covers several retail planning analysis issues. These issues are divided in to two major groups called the city scale retail planning and the retail center market area. The former covers defining the location and the distribution of all retail centers in Jeddah city and classifying retail centers based on size and area. Meanwhile, the latter includes defining the spatial distribution of retail demand of selected centers and identifying the primary catchment area of the selected retail centers. In order to build this application, a survey is made for selected retail demand and GIS address geocoding function is used to convert the address data of retail demand into points features. In addition, GIS network analysis is used in this application to produce drive time based trade areas for the selected retail centers. Results: Retail centers were classified in Jeddah city as three groups called small centers (has less than 100 shops), medium centers (has 100-200 shops) and large centers (has more than 200 shops). Conclusion: Based on this application, retail planner in Jeddah city can easily identify the pattern and trends of all retail centers in Jeddah city. The created application can be used by retail planners in Jeddah city for evaluating retail market and for identifying market segments that the retail centers are under-serving.