The spatial knowledge of retail decision makers: capturing and interpreting group insight using a composite cognitive map

The paper argues that existing techniques for retail site evaluation ignore the useful ‘soft’ insights of retail executives. It outlines a technique for constructing a composite map of retail decision makers’ insights into the location in uences affecting store performance. It has two objectives: to show how the method can be used to construct a basic knowledge base by helping to elicit decision makers’ spatial knowledge; and to clarify the status of the maps in terms of the process of group decision making. Illustrations are given from current work drawn from interviews with executives of a major multiple superstore retailer in the UK. The paper shows how composite mapping provides a means to reduce the ideas of a group without any loss of detail, using key cognitive constructs as a ‘glue’ to provide a template against which individual maps can be compared and better understood. The interpretative method provides a  exible and expedient means for constructing an organizational knowledge base for site location – the value of which can then be tested for modelling purposes – and as an effective counterweight to normative procedures.