Location Intelligence in the retail and fast food industry

Ever noticed how that 24-hour pizza place magically materializes just as you stumble out of a bar, club or lounge on Saturday night? Or how that retail outlet specializing in fashion for 18 – 24 year-olds just happens to be next to a college or university?

The location of a shop front is the single biggest determinant of the sales performance of a retail or food outlet – more than the marketing strategy, staff, even the product itself. If a store isn’t easily accessible to the target market, or is drowned-out by the competition in the area, then failure awaits.

10 ways Location Intelligence can help

Location Intelligence, a component of modern Business Intelligence solutions (for a definition see our blog Defining Location Intelligence), can assist retail and food outlets to:

• Detect and categorize poorly performing stores and assess strategies for rectifying the situation
• Detect and mitigate unnecessary competition between company stores
• Monitor the sales of particular items and success of particular strategies in different locations to help shape future planning as well as stock distribution
• Identify the location of customers, as well as potential customers, and target them with specialized marketing messages via location-specific mediums
• Forecast and develop store-specific budgets and expectations based on the size of surrounding populations and other location specific information
• Select site locations based on the geographic spread of your most profitable customers, proximity of competing stores, etc
• Segment customers in a multi-dimensional way via purchase history, demography as well as location, to develop highly effective and personalized relationships
• Identify marketplace gaps, opportunities, threats and level of penetration (by adding in an element of time, it is also possible to track and predict growth and changes in customer preferences, behavior and demography per region)
• Maximize market share and individual store performance
• Uncover relationships between stores, products and customer types that affect sales performance

Conclusion: Personal experience says location matters

In my formative years I worked in the retail space (for the record it was a handbag shop, and yes, I am male). Our shop had good quality stock and an impressive range. However, it was poorly positioned next to a failed housing estate and obscured from view from passersby. Our sales were negligible despite excellent product, a modern shop-front and solid customer service. I have since been informed that the store has been closed.

Location matters. Luckily, Yellowfin is making Location Intelligence easy.