Sales area
With retail space is in the trade and service providers one serving the sale area designated. In the context of planning and building regulations, it is related to the term floor area .
General
The sales area is made up of the shelf areas , the contact lines running between them , counters and the checkout area ( English frontstore ). The storage rooms and administration ( English backstore ), which are usually structurally separate from this, do not belong to the sales area . The limiting factor in retail is the sales area, which is used to measure sales revenue per m² of retail space ( area productivity ). For this reason, space productivity can only be improved by increasing the rotation of goods or by increasing prices.
Determination of the sales area
The sales area is only that part of the sales outlet where sales regularly take place. Until the case law of the Federal Administrative Court of November 24, 2005, only the areas where the goods are presented and the customers have direct access to the goods (stand areas for goods carriers, consumer areas, etc., so-called English front store ) were counted as part of it . Added to this is the checkout area , where the sale takes place in the legal sense. Areas that are not directly related to the initiation of sales contracts (areas for shopping carts, areas beyond the checkout zones such as entrances and exits, packing areas, shop windows, etc., so-called English backstores ) were not included in the sales area. With the case law of the Federal Administrative Court in questions of the interpretation of public law, this perspective has changed so that in particular the area behind the cash register belongs to the sales area.
Areas that serve as escape routes and are marked as such in the fire protection concept do not count as sales areas.
The modalities for determining the sales area are clarified in Germany in the case law of the Federal Administrative Court and shown in the retail orders of the federal states.
Planning law
The size of the sales area is a decisive criterion for the admissibility of retail businesses within residential areas (general residential area) in accordance with Section 4 of the Building Use Ordinance (BauNVO). From an economic point of view, the sales area is the essential basis of a sales-oriented location analysis and therefore appears to be fundamentally suitable for distinguishing between the shops serving close-to-home supplies and the large-scale retail businesses . The Federal Administrative Court has used this view in its case law and initially set the limit for the large area at 700 m². In the reason for his decision from November 2005, the limit to the large area was then 800 m². The main argument here are the effects of the shops on the neighborhood. Both the space requirement and the environmental impact of the accommodation of the vehicle parking spaces are determined on the basis of the sales area. The larger the sales area, the greater the need for parking space and the associated detrimental traffic volume with noise , exhaust gases , fine dust pollution , etc. However, competition aspects can only be taken into account indirectly in building / planning law.
If the floor area or the sales area of a retail business exceeds a certain level (1,200 m² or, in the case of older development plans, 1,500 m² floor area / 800 m² or 1,000 m² sales area), these retail establishments are only in special areas ( Section 11 BauNVO) or in core areas ( Section 7 BauNVO) permitted. In these cases, it often plays a role whether the type and scope of the goods assortments planned for the planned operation have negative effects on the supply structure of the municipality or city and / or whether even harmful effects are to be expected on the supply structure of neighboring communities and cities are.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marcus Stumpf, The 10 most important future topics in marketing , 2016, p. 149
- ↑ BVerwG, judgment of November 24, 2005, Az .: 4 C 10. 04; VGH Mannheim (Lexetius.com/2005,3236). lexetius.com, accessed August 22, 2011 .
- ↑ BVerwG, judgment of November 24, 2005, Az .: 4 C 14.04
