Finding Prime Real Estate in Potomac Mills

            I went to Potomac Mills over the reading days to buy more business professional clothing for upcoming job interviews. For those who do not know, Potomac Mills is one of Northern Virginia’s least illustrious strip malls, but it is unparalleled in cost effectiveness and proximity to my parent’s home. Additionally, all the stores you could hope to find business professional clothing in are grouped together. Ann Taylor is next to Banana Republic, which sit across from Brooks Brothers and J.Crew. The products sold at each store are homogeneous. You can buy a brown, blue, or black suit, with barely a button out of place to differentiate the products, for about $200 at each store. The signs hanging in the window of each retailer advertised 30%-50% off of full priced items, sales attempting to beat out competitor prices between the stores.

            These stores demonstrate how competitors with homogeneous products will group together in order to maximize their demand base. As Hotelling mentioned in The Economic Journal, each retail store moved closer and closer together in order to maximize the amount of customers they reached since they were selling identical products. The stores attempt to choose the location and quantity price that allow it to have access to the most extensive section of the market. Ann Taylor seems to have claimed the prime location to do so, with placement that gives its store the greatest access to the rest of Potomac Mills in relation to the other stores mentioned. The marketing strategy did benefit the store since it was the most accessible women’s clothing retailer in Potomac Mills, and I left the mall with a shopping bag full of Ann Taylor apparel.