This study aimed to predictretail sales of local markets in the large middle sized city of Chinawith the Huff model. In this model, compared thesales forecasting of business logistics centers(department store, supermarket,shopping center / shopping mall, home appliance ) in a mid-sized city of china,depends upon two factors (store size and travel time) may be different. Peoplesin a mid-sized city are more sensitive to store size because a bigger storesize means greater attractives and consumers are willing to travel further tocompeting stores after passing by nearer stores. The result is to helplocations decision markets estimate a potential sales volume in other cities ofChina.The future research needs to include some more samples expanded with cities of Eastern Asia countries. 

Key Words: the Huff Model, business logistics centers, retail sales forecasting 

1.  INTRODUCTION 

The Huff model is used widely to investigate market areas,because of its ease of use (Park et al., 2006; Lvet al., 2008).the Huff gravity model is widely used in retailing practice (Hernandez, 2000). and the new Huff model was designed in retail salesforecasting of agricultural products in Korea( Youn et al. 2007). Butthe usefulness of the Huff model in predicting the market share of shoppingcenters (Craig, et al.,1984). 

This study begins to examine sales of businesslogistics centers(department store, super market,shopping center / shopping mall, home appliance stores) by using the new Huff model, in Jinan, a large local city situated inthe middle of China, The study from the comparison andanalysis establishes a research model by setting up such variable as outlay(i.e.,store size and travel time). This study is based on data in 2010. Aspreadsheet of Microsoft Excel 2003 is used to examine correlation with changesof the sales depending upon the variables.

2. Revisiting the existing models

One of the most important decisionsretailers have to make is the choice of a store’s location (Craig et al., 1984). For selecting the right location,return on investment is the most important decision criterion (Krause-Traudes, et al., 2008). Therefore, retailers need to evaluatewhat the potential sales of a new store will be. Three approaches to estimatethe potential sales for a store at the location are (1) the Huff gravity model,(2) regression analysis, and (3) the analog model (Levy& Weitz, 2007). 

In this model,the probability that customer ishopsat location j depends upon twofactors: the size of the store and the time it takes to travel to the store(Levy & Weitz, 2007)—the larger the store, the greater the probability ofshopping, while the greater the travel time or distance, the lower theprobability. The mathematical formula is as follows (Huff, 1964):