A network-based prediction of retail stores commercial categories and optimal locations

Abstract

I study the spatial organization of retail commercial activities. These are organized in a network comprising "anti-links", i.e. links of negative weight. From pure location data, network analysis leads to a community structure that closely follows the commercial classification of the US Department of Labor. The interaction network allows to build a 'quality' index of optimal location niches for stores, which has been empirically tested.