This paper deals with spatial shopping behaviour of consumers in a certain region. An attempt is made to formulate a theoretical framework in such a way that the choice of mathematical representations of variables in the model will become less arbitrarily than is usually the case in this type of models. In this paper a first step is taken to such a theory based on the ideas of Bacon (1971) by assuming that a consumer optimizes an objective function which is more specific than the utility function in logit or probit analysis and which gives us a better opportunity to test the underlying hypothesis. Special attention is given to economic variables. Furthermore the role of distance in the choice problem of the consumer is emphasized, attraction areas of shops are derived from the theory in case of a simplified regional structure, and are compared with those derived from a disaggregate choice model with a logit structure.