microeconomics Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics fo ...

, a threshold population is the minimum number of people needed for a

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a pu ...

to be worthwhile. In economic geography, a threshold population is the minimum number of people necessary before a particular good or service can be provided in an area. The concept is equivalent to the "range" in central place theory and

retailing Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

, which delineates the market area of a central place for a particular good or service, and is dependent on the

spatial distribution A spatial distribution in statistics is the arrangement of a phenomenon across the Earth's surface and a graphical display of such an arrangement is an important tool in geographical and environmental statistics. A graphical display of a spatial di ...

of population and the willingness of consumers to travel a given distance to purchase particular goods or services. Typically a low-order shop (such as a grocer or newsagent) may require only 800 or so customers, whereas a higher-order store such as Marks and Spencer or Waitrose may need a threshold of 70,000 to be profitable, and a university may need 350,000 to be viable.Tiscali encyclopedia
Thresholds may also be linked to the spending power of customers; this is most obvious in periodic markets in poor countries, where wages are so low that people can buy the goods or services only once in a while.

References

Microeconomics Human geography {{microeconomics-stub