Micromarketing: Location data to better serve your customers – Part 1 of 2
Location data such as using a zip code to find out how much revenue a grocery store can make is critical in your decision to decide if you want to open the store at that location. This is just one example of the powerful potential of micromarketing. Let’s go through an example of using location data to open a grocery store in Orange County. We will be using SRC’s Allocate to help analyze the location data and MapInfo Professional to map the data.
Mapping propensity and density to determine revenue potential of the store: As we see in the images below, we use SRC’s Allocate to determine the revenue potential of a grocery store in Orange County (OC). We choose the retail store option as the input variable and the dollar per store as the output using the software. Data is also available for furniture stores, sports stores, etc. After the variables are input a map is produced (below) which can be interpreted as follows. For Orange County, the average grocery expenditure per house hold per month (propensity) across a block group (a group of zip codes) where darker green shades indicate higher expenditure for groceries per household per month is approximately $5800-$16900/month for the darkest or most expensive parts. The hashed region shows total dollars spent for groceries per square mile per month in Orange County (expenditure density). The darkest hashed regions indicate people in OC spend a total of $18,000,000 to $103,000,000 per month on groceries. This data helps you determine if the revenue potential is close to what you expect and can help compute your approximate profit given all the expenses you will incur. It also helps you compare revenue potential across different locations to help you determine the ideal/optimal location for you.
Choosing a Store Location by Mapping Competitors Location Data: Using the Yellow pages we identify the zip codes of the competitors. For this example – a grocery store – let’s assume it’s Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. We identified 19 Trader Joe’s and 2 Whole Foods store in the OC area and mapped their trade areas (area from where customers visit the store – usually a 5 minute radius for a grocery store) using the software. The blue areas represent the Trader Joe’s and the red and fluorescent green represent Whole Foods. This is mapped on the propensity and density map from above using MapInfo Professional. With this information we choose a location (in yellow) that is far from competitors and has good propensity and density. You will also check for magnet stores, customer demographics and traffic (info in next paragraph) and ensure that the information provided by these parameters will help drive your store’s growth. You can also compute the break even demand (average retail demand per square mile) as seen below to inform your decision.
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