Choosing the Right Retail Sites and Target Markets

Retailers know that the success of a store depends largely on its location. While GIS plays a large role in site selection and target marketing decisions, the data that’s used to fuel the GIS engine is equally important. The right combination of demographic data and a powerful, easy to use GIS program can deliver stellar results for retailers.

Retailers have found this combination of GIS and demographic data in MapBridge®, a powerful, easy-to-use addition to ESRI’s ArcGIS that provides both mapping and reporting on demographic variables from within ArcGIS. MapBridge spans the functionality of two powerful applications, ESRI’s ArcGIS and SRC Allocate to provide retailers with powerful geodemographic mapping technology in one easy-to-use interface.

Site Selection and Target Marketing

One way retailers use MapBridge is to compare the demographics around a proposed store to the demographics around existing store locations. The resulting maps and reports help them quickly discover which potential locations should perform as well as their best existing locations.

Retailers use MapBridge not only to analyze potential sites. Direct marketing campaigns can be more effective when MapBridge is part of the campaign toolset. Retailers can easily select geographic areas where the demographics fit the customer profile they are trying to reach.

By targeting only select geographies — all the way down to the block group level — retailers can save money on campaigns and achieve better response rates.

SRC President Dean Stocker, whose company provides the Allocate demographic data retrieval engine for MapBridge, said that “MapBridge is an elegant approach to mainstreaming sophisticated GIS and micromarketing into one easy-to-use solution.”

ArcGIS at Your Fingertips

MapBridge takes advantages of the power of ArcGIS to help retailers save time, money and make smart decisions. Users can easily pick the geographic area they want to study from a list, layer or grid area. And ring or drive time areas around locations can be saved as “virtual geographies” and used again, increasing productivity.

All available demographic data can be viewed and selected right from ArcGIS’ table of contents. Retailers who know their target audience can use expressions to define their own demographic variables and add them to the standard variable list. For example, multiple income groups can be joined together to form a single variable for the income range you want to study.

For any geographic area you study, you can create three types of reports: summary, comparison or rank. Reports can be created in Excel, HTML, PDF or other popular formats, and maps can be published directly to PowerPoint for presentation purposes.

Convincing Results

The results you get with MapBridge are convincing. Maps provide an insightful view of any market area at a quick glance. And demographic reports and graphs give the deep level of detail and information retailers need to make smart marketing, sales and operational decisions.

MapBridge is developed, marketed and supported by Mapping Analytics, an ESRI Business Partner. This company of skilled professionals has more than 18 years experience helping retailers use geographic analysis and mapping to gain greater clarity into their markets and customers, and to deploy sales and marketing resources more effectively.aving you hours of time. You can create trade areas, maps and reports in a few simple steps. Integration with applications you use everyday such as Excel and PowerPoint increases your productivity.

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