THE COGNITION OF SHOPPING CENTERS BY THE CENTRAL AREA AND SUBURBAN ELDERLY: AN ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER INFORMATION FIELDS AND EVALUATIVE CRITERIA

This article reports an empirical analysis of the shopping center cognitions of subgroups of older urban consumers domiciled in (a) the central area and (b) two contrasting suburban distr' ts. Attention is focused on two behavioral constructs which underlie consumer spatial dec'sion-making: f (i) information field, and (ii) evaluative criteria. The data are based on a questionnairehterview survey of ambulatory elderly residents of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The findings disclose significant differences among the subgroups concerning both the magnitudes and compositions of their information fields. Additionally, the results of a resistanceto- change experiment reveal that each subgroup identifies "distance from home," "prices," and provision of a "grocery supermarket" as the most important of seventeen shopping center attributes. Significant differences among the levels of importance assigned to eight of the other attributes not only reflect the limited mobility of the central area elderly, but also the contextual effects of the local shopping resources of the three subgroups.