Abstract:

Since the reform and opening up, Chinese cities have experienced a period of rapid transformation and reconstruction against the background of economic globalization. Industrial development is one of the main driving forces of urban spatial expansion; therefore, urban spatial reconstruction in China is first reflected in the reconstruction of industrial space during the transition period. Alongside rapid urbanization, urban industrial construction has gradually shifted from the secondary industry to the tertiary industry, which has an increasing impact on residents' production and living. Thus, paying attention to the spatial distribution of the service industry and its location selection factors has become an important way to explore urban spatial reconstruction. The wholesale industry is an important part of a city's service industry, which has an important influence on commercial production, circulation and consumption. Because wholesale enterprises involve a great number of employees, and its spatial distribution pattern caused traffic congestion, environmental pollution and a series of urban problems, the location of wholesale enterprises has become a hot topic amongst scholars. This paper uses Beijing as a typical example, takes wholesale enterprises as the research object, and analyzes the spatial pattern evolution and agglomeration characteristics of wholesale enterprises in Beijing using kernel density estimation and Ripley's K(d) function. It then explores the influencing factors of the wholesale enterprise location selection by means of Conditional Logit model. The results show that: (1) In the perspective of spatial distribution, wholesale enterprises are mainly concentrated within the Fifth Ring Road, and present obvious spatial agglomeration characteristics; the scale of agglomeration is mainly concentrated in a range of 0-28 km. (2) Seen from the spatial agglomeration strength, the agglomeration peak distance is constantly expanding, the concentration decreased within the Second Ring Road, and three core groupings are formed in a peripheral area. (3) Local economy, city economy, land price, labor cost, infrastructure and spatial distance have a significant influence on the location choice of wholesale enterprises, and land price and agglomeration is the most prominent of all. (4) According to different types of enterprises, foreign enterprises have a great demand for better traffic conditions and innovation environment, but the impact of commercial benchmark land price on the location choice is not significant.

Key words: wholesale enterprises, spatial distribution, location choice, Beijing