Exploratory research on restaurant agglomerations in Singapore : a case study of Holland Village and Dempsey Hill.

• Main Authors: Lee, Yii Yin., Wong, Ken Mun., Ow, Chin Kang.
• Other Authors: Hui Pun Zee Pamsy
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Industries and labor
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/15064
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper presents an exploratory research that discusses the reasons behind restaurant agglomerations in Singapore, with particular focus on Holland Village and Dempsey Hill. Our analyses contend that the agglomeration externalities of specialized input, labor and knowledge spillovers, which have often been applied in the context of the manufacturing industries, are not applicable to the explanation of restaurant clusters in Singapore. Rather, we propose reputation as the motivating factor for restaurants to cluster. We employed a quantitative approach to extract data from the restaurant agglomerations and identified the restaurant site selection preferences of the tenants in the two agglomerations. Thereafter, we conducted independent sample t-tests on the data comparing the clusters, as well as between independent restaurants against chain restaurants. We concluded that the clustering behavior can be explained by reputation, while the traditional agglomeration effects offered little explanation to this phenomenon.