A Service-Oriented Solution for Retail Store Network Planning

Diverse knowledge and techniques are required in retail store network planning (RSNP), which involves indispensable and interdependent strategic decision processes such as performance evaluation, trade area analysis, market potential forecasting and retail network optimization. On the one hand, these processes are often tightly related and need to be integrated to solve the complex business optimization problems. On the other hand, the required information, e.g. external geographic and demographic information and internal store information, and decision units are usually geographically dispersed. Decentralization is required at both data administration level and decision process level. To offer a feasible loose-coupled and easy-to-implemented solution, this paper proposes a service-oriented framework for RSNP. Detailed specification of RSNP services, process model and corresponding messaging mechanism are also detailed. The RSNP implementation case for retail chain store operators is finally presented to illustrate how the proposed solution improves the flexibility and interoperability of existing RSNP practices.