Determination of the gravitational model and its parameters for forecasting the number of visitors of trade objects by the example of Kharkov

The article investigates modern scientific approaches to forecasting using the theory of gravity. It has been established that nowadays determination of the volumes of potential visitors of retail trade objects have not been fully investigated. A hypothesis has been put forward to carry out an appropriate calculation using the gravitational model proposed in the work. The offered model takes into account the regional features of the research object, distance factor from the consumer and the characteristics of trade objects, as well as the state of development of competitors in the environment. The application of the proposed model has shown the possibility of determining the parameter of its empirical components, which ensures the calculation of the values of the volumes of potential visitors of retail trade objects. Comparison of calculated and actual quantitative indicators has shown that the proposed model assumes an error of 3.7 %. This confirmed the proposed hypothesis about the possibility of applying gravitational approaches when forecasting the quantitative characteristics of the volumes of visitors to retail trade objects, taking into account special features.