Over fall break I went to visit my best friend from high school. She goes to school in Kansas, so I obviously flew to see her. I flew out of Richmond and had a connection in Atlanta. My layover in Atlanta was 40 minutes. I had just enough time to get dinner! I got off my flight and immediately looked for food. My plan was to walk the whole concourse and then pick which place looked the best. While I was walking through concourse C, I realized that the Atlanta airport was the perfect example of spatial location theory! Majority of the restaurants and food were located in the middle of the concourse. 2 Starbucks, 2 Chick-fil-a's, and a Jersey Mikes all within feet of each other, as shown on this map.
In the Atlanta airport, there are multiple fast food restaurants, all producing the same type of food, within a given concourse. This explains spatial location theory perfectly. If there are multiple firms producing similar/identical output within a given territory, eventually they will end up in the middle. This is because the middle minimizes walking distance for consumers and they want to beat out competition. They pick these points to maximize profits and foot traffic. And let me tell you, there is a lot of foot traffic at the Atlanta airport! This is similar to the example we talked about in class with Peter and Christina selling hot dogs on the beach. At the beginning Peter and Christina start at different locations on the beach (equal distance from the middle) but as one of them gets closer and closer to the middle so does the other. This is because when one of them moves closer to the middle, they are gaining more customers. Eventually, it is a race to the middle. This race towards the middle is what is reflected in the Atlanta airport, they want to serve the median to maximize profits.
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