Assignment 2

Study Areas, Geocoding, Customers, and Trade Areas

 

 

    The purpose of this assignment was to introduce us to spatial tools in business analyst. We started with the basics of study areas, geocoding, customers, and trade areas. These were all tied into our assignment dealing with coffee shops and doughnut shops. The question we were looking at was about two friends in the San Francisco area who owned coffee and doughnut shops. They wanted to maximize their trade areas in order to benefit both businesses. The store owners asked for a map illustrating where their customers are located, along with a map showing all other competing coffee/doughnut businesses in the area. They would also like two other maps showing their trade areas and one of driving time from their customers addresses to their businesses. These questions could pose a problem but luckily I was given plenty of data. The most crucial data I was given was the addresses of the customers.

    The first process of making my maps was to illustrate the study area of San Francisco. This was easily done in business analysts and allowed for me to just pull data from San Francisco county. I now had to place their two separate coffee shops on the map along with all their respective customers. I was able to geocode all the customers and stores on the map along with using tools in arctoolbox to show the mean centers of the stores. I was lucky to have detailed information on the customers addresses when geocoding. The more specific the address is when geocoding the better.

    The next step was to locate and map the similar business. In business analyst I was able to go into the menu and add business listings. This allowed for me to select businesses within my study area that were either coffee or doughnut shops. This is important for the owners to see exactly where their competition is at and how they can better their business to keep having their customers coming back rather then leave for another business. When looking at the map pictured below you can see the northern store has much more competition then the southern store. This store could look to add more to their menu or do something unique to keep their customers coming back.

      The last two maps I wanted to create were the maps dealing with trade area and drive time. This is important because you can see how large of an area you are pulling your customer base from. In business analysts menu there is a tool called trade area. This function allowed for me to compute all this information. When working with trade area I also made a report. This report allowed for me to show community profiling and retail goods and services expenditures. Also, my trade area was broken into three sections. My three rings around the business were broken into 40% of customers, 60% of customers, and 80% of customers falling within my three rings. I could change these rings or add more if I wanted. With the trade area map the owners can now see exactly how far away they are pulling their customers from.

    My final map was showing customer drive time within how many miles away they were coming from. San Francisco isn't a large city so by being able to pull customers from over a mile away is very pleasing for any business, especially a coffee or doughnut shop. I computed my data just like before for the trade area in business analysts except instead of showing 40,60,80 percentages I changed the rings to showing miles. My rings were setup as half a mile, one mile, and a mile and a half. This would give the owners an area of how far a majority of their customers are willing to travel to come to their business.

    After computing all the data and analyzing it, it was easy to see that these two business were doing well in their markets. Looking at the competitors map (map 2) you can see that the northern store had more competition yet they were still pulling customers away from their competitors areas. When looking at the customer trade areas map (map 3) you can see that the northern store has a smaller trade area. Now this can be both good and bad. The good of it is that their customers locations are located closer to the store allowing for easier access of the business. The bad would be that it is not covering as large of an area for their customer base. The northern part of San Francisco could be more densely populated and have more living quarters compared to the southern business trade area.