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1. Data science for pedestrian and high street retailing as a framework for advancing urban informatics to individual scales

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s44212-022-00009-x  

   Torrens, Paul M. ( October 2022 , Urban Informatics)

   In this paper, we consider the applicability of the customer journey framework from retailing as a driver for urban informatics at individual scales within urban science. The customer journey considers shopper experiences in the context of shopping paths, retail service spaces, and touch-points that draw them into contact. Around this framework, retailers have developed sophisticated data science for observation, identification, and measurement of customers in the context of their shopping behavior. This knowledge supports broad data-driven understanding of customer experiences in physical spaces, economic spaces of decision and choice, persuasive spaces of advertising and branding, and inter-personal spaces of customer-staff interaction.

   We review the literature on pedestrian and high street retailing, and on urban informatics. We investigate whether the customer journey could be usefully repurposed for urban applications. Specifically, we explore the potential use of the customer journey framework for producing new insight into pedestrian behavior, where a sort of empirical hyperopia has long abounded because data are always in short supply.

   Our review addresses how the customer journey might be used as a structure for examining how urban walkers come into contact with the built environment, how people actively and passively sense and perceive ambient city life as they move, how pedestrians make sense of urban context, and how they use this knowledge to build cognition of city streetscapes. Each of these topics has relevance to walking studies specifically, but also to urban science more generally. We consider how retailing might reciprocally benefit from urban science perspectives, especially in extending the reach of retailers' insight beyond store walls, into the retail high streets from which they draw custom.

   We conclude that a broad set of theoretical frameworks, data collection schemes, and analytical methodologies that have advanced retail data science closer and closer to individual-level acumen might be usefully applied to accomplish the same in urban informatics. However, we caution that differences between retailers’ and urban scientists’ viewpoints on privacy presents potential controversy.

    

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2. Agent models of customer journeys on retail high streets

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11403-022-00350-z  

   Torrens, Paul M. ( May 2022 , Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination)

   In this review paper, we aim to make the case that a concept from retail analytics and marketing—thecustomer journey—can provide promising new frameworks and support for agent-based modeling, with a broad range of potential applications to high-resolution and high-fidelity simulation of dynamic phenomena on urban high streets. Although not the central focus of the review, we consider agent-based modeling of retail high streets against a backdrop of broader debate about downtown vitality and revitalization, amid a climate of economic challenges for brick-and-mortar retail. In particular, we consider how agent-based modeling, supported by insights from consideration of indoor shopping, can provide planning and decision support in outdoor high street settings. Our review considers abstractions of customers through conceptual modeling and customer typology, as well as abstractions of retailing as stationary and mobile. We examine high-level agency of shop choice and selection, as well as low-level agency centered on perception and cognition. Customer journeys are most often trips through geography; we therefore review path-planning, generation of foot traffic, wayfinding, steering, and locomotion. On busy high streets, journeys also manifest within crowd motifs; we thus review proximity, group dynamics, and sociality. Many customer journeys along retail high streets are dynamic, and customers will shift their journeys as they come into contact with experiences and service offerings. To address this, we specifically consider treatment of time and timing in agent-based models. We also examine sites for customer journeys, looking in particular at how agent-based models can provide support for the analysis of atmospherics, artifacts, and location-based services. Finally, we examine staff-side agency, considering store staff as potential agents outdoors; and we look at work to build agent-based models of fraud from customer journey analysis.

    

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3. Mexico Evidence on the Regional Retail Impacts of Violent Crime

   https://doi.org/10.22158/jepf.v4n3p244  

   Fullerton, Jr. ; Walke, Adam G. ( July 2018 , Journal of Economics and Public Finance)

   Prior research reports mixed results regarding the economic impacts of crime. This study employs data from all regions of Mexico, including border regions in both the north and the south, to examine the effects of homicides on retail activity across Mexico during a period of escalating violence. The results indicate that one additional homicide within a municipality eliminates one retail establishment and one paid job in the retail sector. Furthermore, the negative consequences of violent crime for retailers are augmented by proximity to an international border. This is consistent with previous research findings that cross-border shopping is a key feature of commerce along the international boundaries of Mexico. It suggests that crime waves may disproportionately impact border city retail activity by partially diverting customer traffic to stores located in neighboring countries. This result is also consistent with the finding of recent research that violent conflict in northern Mexico resulted in increased retail activity in some United States border cities.

    

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4. Robots at your doorstep: acceptance of near-future technologies for automated parcel delivery

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45371-1  

   Said, Maher ; Aeschliman, Spencer ; Stathopoulos, Amanda ( December 2023 , Scientific Reports)

   The logistics and delivery industry is undergoing a technology-driven transformation, with robotics, drones, and autonomous vehicles expected to play a key role in meeting the growing challenges of last-mile delivery. To understand the public acceptability of automated parcel delivery options, this U.S. study explores customer preferences for four innovations: autonomous vehicles, aerial drones, sidewalk robots, and bipedal robots. We use an Integrated Nested Choice and Correlated Latent Variable (INCLV) model to reveal substitution effects among automated delivery modes in a sample of U.S. respondents. The study finds that acceptance of automated delivery modes is strongly tied to shipment price and time, underscoring the importance of careful planning and incentives to maximize the trialability of innovative logistics options. Older individuals and those with concerns about package handling exhibit a lower preference for automated modes, while individuals with higher education and technology affinity exhibit greater acceptance. These findings provide valuable insights for logistics companies and retailers looking to introduce automation technologies in their last-mile delivery operations, emphasizing the need to tailor marketing and communication strategies to meet customer preferences. Additionally, providing information about appropriate package handling by automated technologies may alleviate concerns and increase the acceptance of these modes among all customer groups.

    

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5. Providing Limited Local Electric Service During a Major Grid Outage: A First Assessment Based on Customer Willingness to Pay

   https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12838  

   Baik, Sunhee ; Morgan, M. Granger ; Davis, Alexander L. ( June 2017 , Risk Analysis)

   While they are rare, widespread blackouts of the bulk power system can result in large costs to individuals and society. If local distribution circuits remain intact, it is possible to use new technologies including smart meters, intelligent switches that can change the topology of distribution circuits, and distributed generation owned by customers and the power company, to provide limited local electric power service. Many utilities are already making investments that would make this possible. We use customers' measured willingness to pay to explore when the incremental investments needed to implement these capabilities would be justified. Under many circumstances, upgrades in advanced distribution systems could be justified for a customer charge of less than a dollar a month (plus the cost of electricity used during outages), and would be less expensive and safer than the proliferation of small portable backup generators. We also discuss issues of social equity, extreme events, and various sources of underlying uncertainty.

    

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