The number of empty bays in a retail car park is a good indicator of how healthy business is at the supermarket, shopping centre or town centre that the facility serves. If it is empty things are not good. If there are queues of traffic onto the highway then another car park is needed. If the car park is shut - as was the case at the ill-fated Castlepoint shopping centre before Christmas - then things are seriously amiss. The provision of insufficient parking spaces is one of the key reasons why people lose their temper during shopping trips, recent research carried out for credit card provider Morgan Stanley revealed. Some 28% of the 2,000 shoppers interviewed admitted to "retail rage", with 10% blaming the lack of a parking space. Respondents said that they most often encountered parking problems during the weekend, which prompted 48% to say they tried to squeeze in shopping trips during the week.
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