通过对国内外批发业空间及其形成机制的研究梳理,将批发业的研究分为三个阶段,一是20世纪30-60年代,依附于区位论的批发业区位研究,学者受克里斯塔勒的中心地理论影响,流行用与批发贸易相关的指标来测量城市中心性;二是20世纪70-90年代,对批发业区位进行专门研究,并对其形成机制的探讨程度加深:同时,通过研究批发业来探讨城镇体系的文献也较为多见;三是20世纪90年代中期至今,批发业的空间优化,并与现代物流业紧密结合。我国对批发业的学术研究主要集中在批发市场方面,且起步较晚,研究内容上,对批发市场空间布局及其影响因素的研究较为深入,但缺乏批发市场的空间演变及其形成机制的研究。同时,批发市场货流空间的研究、批发业交易功能与物流功能的空间分离关注较少。
Wholesale business and retail business belong to the business flow, which are the important parts of the circulation. Compared to retail business, the achievement of studies about spatial patterns and their mechanism of wholesale business are not enough. By literature reviewing, this paper concludes that the re- search process is distributed into three stages. The first is from 1930S to 1960S, the location theory relates to the content of the wholesale location. And under the impact of the Central Place Theory put forward by Christaller, many scholars inclines to use indicators about wholesale trade to measure the central character of the cities. The second is from 1970S to 1990S, a special study of the location of wholesale business is made in 1970, and their mechanism is discussed more deeply than before. At the same time, to explore the urban system through the wholesale trade studies is also more common. The third is since the mid-1990s, the space optimization of wholesale business and the integration of wholesale business and modern logistics activity are got more attention. In China, studies about the wholesale business start late (from the 1990s until now there is only 20 years) and mainly center on the wholesale markets, especially on the spatial patterns of wholesale markets and their influential factors, lacking the research of space evolution and its formation mechanism. Besides, although the wholesale market is one kind of logistics activity nodes in the city, its spa- tial pattems of goods flow are often neglected by scholars. Furthermore, scholars also pay little attention to the space separation of wholesale trade activity and logistics activity. Taking wholesale business into the lo- gistics activities is also not commonly seen in the works about the urban logistics activity studies.