Bay Street Swot Analysis

Part B: Discussion. This assignment addresses two retail areas in Toronto. The first one is the ancillary area west of Bay Street and the second one is Yonge street north of Price Street (The exact area of observation can be found by viewing the two maps in the Appendix). Despite the fact that both retail areas are in the center of Toronto and only a few kilometers away, their character and other characteristics however, are drastically different from each other. Evidences are collected during the field observation to compare and contrast the two types of retailing activities, and presented below.
Location - The first and most important factor that greatly differentiates the two retail systems is their respective location. Many other minor
As a matter of fact, the ancillary retail matches its market orientation extremely well, since it offers a good balance of retail chains and independent stores. Many of the travelers in the ancillary path walk in a very fast pace, which means they want to spend the minimum amount of time to search for goods and products without delaying their plan afterwards. Thus retail chains can provide a better information of what kind of service or product that they offer, and therefore save the time of the shoppers since many of them already know where they can purchase their desired goods. On the other hand, many other individual owned store can be found here, such as Spa, Jewelry, and Dry Cleaning and Fragrance stores. Those shops are higher end and targeting most of the businessman and businesswoman, whom make up to 50% of the pedestrian population at the ancillary path. Moreover, to targeting those “fast shoppers”, a food court can be found at the ancillary path, a variety of fast food can be found in here with a wide space to eat and sit. In the same way, the retail strip also matches its market orientation really well, but with a different strategy. The retail strip only has 6 retail chains out of 51 observed stores, it is obvious that this retail strip is more individual focused. People walk here have more time to spend as they pace slowly around the
– The design of both retail areas fits into its respective location and demographic area. In the retail strip, the stores can be found in the same building and have multiple levels, and generally each store has more space and shelves compares to the ancillary path. For the design of the whole retail area, the retail strips are just one line of stores on both side of Yonge St, it is easy to see and find the store. Conversely, the ancillary retail system is completely different, it has multiple paths and is hard to navigate where you are going. All of the retail stores are scattered around the systems and without navigation, you could bypass only a fraction of stores in the system. In addition, the closing time for the ancillary area is unified, unlike some of the store in the retail strip which are already closed at 5pm. For composition of retail, it is obvious that the ancillary is targeted for professions and commuters who have limited time to spend. For retail strip, many of the store are redundant and provide similar service, it is up to the customers to decided which store they would like to visit and customer have more options to