Similar stores, when clustered in urban locations, often close down; many scholars have explained this phenomenon using Hotelling’s theory. However, empirically, several studies have found that competition between rivals causes stores to move away from each other, exhibiting a repulsive force. By contrast, other studies insist that customers strongly drive the agglomeration of retail rivals. This study chooses convenience stores as an experimental subject to investigate why similar shops cluster in an area and to assess the results of increasing levels of competition. By combining various types of big-data sources including convenience stores’ revenues, diverse consumer factors, and built environments, this study found that retail shops cluster to earn revenue by exploiting the consumer purchasing capacity in an area. This benefit, however, disappears when the competition increases beyond a certain threshold. By controlling for the numbers of pedestrians, residents, and employees, this study is the first to explain why similar shops cluster in urban districts and to show the limitations of retail rivals’ clustering.

类似的商店，当聚集在城市地区时，往往会关门大吉；许多学者用Hotelling的理论解释了这一现象。然而，根据经验，一些研究发现竞争对手之间的竞争会导致商店相互疏远，表现出排斥力。相比之下，其他研究坚持认为，客户强烈地推动了零售竞争对手的集聚。本研究选择便利店作为实验对象，调查相似商店聚集在一个地区的原因，并评估竞争水平提高的结果。通过结合便利店收入、多样化的消费因素和建筑环境等各类大数据来源，本研究发现，零售店聚集是通过利用一个地区的消费者购买能力来赚取收入的。然而，这个好处，当竞争增加超过某个阈值时消失。通过控制行人、居民和员工的数量，本研究首次解释了为什么类似的商店聚集在市区，并展示了零售竞争对手聚集的局限性。