Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily de

[Saurabhnagar]

The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.

"Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

 

 

The shop owner presents a genuine problem faced by them. The reasons shop owner gives for decrease in number of shoppers is the increase in the number of skateboarders. The scenarios where the recommendation might or might not work can be as follows.

 

As the number of skateboarders have increased in the central plaza, it might have caused the customers to avoid the area as skateboarding in the plaza, where people are walking leisurely and can cause accidents. Additionally people generally come to these places with their children, children tend to run around and people skateboarding in the same areas might be very dangerous and cause serious injuries. Thus this can be a reason of diminished business, as if people wont come to central plaza the sales will automatically go down.Another reason can be that, people generally are very attached to shopping areas and recreational places and do not like to see them dirty or vandalized. Thus the recent increase in littering and vandalism as well has caused the people to opt out of coming to central plaza.

However, the case might even be that due to bad quality of goods, increased prices etc, in central plaza there was steady decrease in the shoppers, and the skateboarders found a perfect place to skate as plaza was relatively uncrowded. Thus the skateboarding increased overtime. The case could also be that the decrease in the shoppers is because of the recession and there is no relationship between decrease in shoppers and increase in skateboarders, and might be just a coincident. In these cases even if the skate boarders are prohibited it might not result in increase in the shoppers at central plaza.

 

The shop owner has given very limited information. To understand the matter properly and devise a solution more information about the scenario of central plaza should be given.