Profile of
Downtown Shoppers

Promoting downtown to shoppers

Promoting the downtown, and giving it the appropriate image for public consumption, is one of the most important strategies of revitalization. Downtowns for many years have had a negative image, and this must be turned around by using Madison Avenue techniques. One community in Wisconsin conducted a focus group of shoppers and found "...their customers didn't even like the word, 'downtown.' Their customers were much more interested in the picture of Main Street with its references to soft lens images of snow and carriages."
(Stitt, Bert. 1996. "The Lies of Downtown: A Look at the Myths That Keep Downtowns from Engaging in Effective Revitalization." Small Town (July-August). p. 20.)

Market analysis

"One of the most grossly misunderstood aspects of downtown revitalization is the importance of market analysis. It baffles me that even among the most sophisticated merchants there is so little commitment to understanding the market.

"...Surveys, while a necessary part of market analysis, are not sufficient. Very often the survey work, itself, is substandard because it usually focuses on a customer survey of the downtown. What we really need are surveys of the customers in our nearby shopping malls and of people shopping in other downtowns in order to learn about their preferences, whether they also use our downtown and about other pertinent information. We need to survey/inventory the business mix of our nearby competitors and complimenters, and we need to survey contemporary marketing information such as national trends that influence shopping habits." (Stitt, p. 20.)

One of the best analyses of downtown revitalization ever written may have been a letter to the editor of a local paper from a disgruntled resident.


"Personally, I find the stores downtown boring, out of date, drab, with little variety of merchandise to offer. The hours of business are not convenient, the window displays lack imagination and don't pique your interest to come inside and find out what they have to offer.

"I don't mean to put down downtown, but it seems to me that it is largely the merchants who have the power to change downtown for the better or watch it fall into decay. Putting bricks all over the place, fancy lighting and planting trees we can all watch die (because nobody waters them) may be some consultant's solution to reviving downtown, but I think I have a better one.

"Open the stores when people want to shop, offer merchandise that people want to buy, and display the same in attractive settings, and people will flock to your businesses. The solution to downtown's malaise is not to pour more taxes into bricks that will sink into the ground and trees that will be dead in a year. Downtown will be revitalized when the merchants stop blaming parking for their problems, and bring their stores from the '50s into the '90s."

Dan Byrne. Ann Arbor News (date unknown).