The Behavior of Merchant's toward the Development of the Commercial Areas in Amman

Abstract

This study tackles the issue of the development of the commercial areas through the employment of "Demography of Firms Approach" to analyze the mobility of the commercial enterprises in Amman. The company demography reasoning is based on the study of the economic activities of the company and their relationship to the concept of the family. In other words, companies are like families, small size businesses behave like a family, whereas, big businesses behave like an extended family. In this regard, enterprises undergo "birth, growth, immigration and may be death (closure). The effect of economic and political factors has been considered to explain the development of the city commercial areas of Amman. To achieve this aim, the researcher has chosen the commercial areas in Greater Amman and a random sample of merchants consisting of 106 members distributed over 8 commercial areas: Downtown, Wihdat, Marka, Shmeisanee, Suwaifiyyeh, Abdon, Rabia and Suwaileh. The study has come to important conclusions, such as: There is a difference in the concentration of commercial activity due to geographic location. Similar to large cities, the greatest commercial activity was found in the central business district of the city, Amman. Furthermore, the growth and expansion of the city and its population led to a new situation where the old commercial center became too far from consumers, especially in the field of services. In consideration of the fact that shopping is limited to one major type, which is that the consumer goes to the produces, it became imperative that the producer, the merchant in this case, should go to the consumer by creating branches that meet the needs of consumers. This will lead to creating new business centers in the new commercial areas. Based on the findings of this study, the researcher recommends the establishment of cooperation between Greater Amman Municipality, research institutions and Amman Chamber of Commerce, to found a data base that will provide the information needed. This study analyzed the foundation and growth of commercial areas from the point of view of the actors. Therefore, a study based on the behavior of the consumers is highly recommended.