The use of GIS in providing location for the retail sector

GIS has been key within the past twenty years to revitalizing and reinventing the business world along with helping many organisations survive in the face of a changing economy. GIS helps understand local market drivers and in an industry when consumers are now king, GIS has allowed for retail businesses to develop and provide a service at their optimum level through programmes designed to identify the best locations for retailers to setup. United Properties created a relytics programme within the US which used ArcGIS mapping to provide a quick and easy to use web-based tool kit, available for prospective retailers. It enables them to see the potential for a particular business using an agent which provides a detailed report using mapping and demographics from specific locations. GIS also has helped give retail centres a detailed view into potential performance of their business under different market conditions and economic factors which is useful in providing future insight for the development and growth of a retail centre in particular. Furthermore GIS is applicable throughout the whole business circle. It not only provides site selection and market planning, it optimises a growth strategy for a company and allows businesses to obtain information which states the pace, scale and format in which it should expand and what the potential performance of that business would be. GIS selects and highlights the required information, thus condensing many long winded reports, submitted to companies in retail centres before about their performance. GIS provides clear statistical information, along with locations for increased development. GIS simplifies the data for business and combines all necessary factors to produced focused and relevant reports for businesses. Web-based developments like that of www.alleganyworks.org help retail employers and prospective tenants search by location or tenant type to provide the key details required. The interactive system uses GIS mapping and combines demographic systems to provide high quality information on the best location for businesses to be setup or moved to based on the demand in areas, the type of people available for that service etc. The creation of applications within the Apple industry has also been of great benefit to the retail industry with GIS programmes providing access to demographic and market facts about locations within the US. These are all free to access and are the case within the retail sector within the UK with apps for Tesco, Asda, Topshop all in use across Apple and Andriod products. GIS has helped to provide location data to customers and increased customers feedback and market research through these helps informs the business of how to keep expanding within the current markets. GIS allows for data to be continually updated which allows businesses to stay current to markets both locally and globally. Without GIS many companies would have ceased in existence within the troubled economy however GIS allows for the best business model available within the most suitable location to best enable retail businesses to start up and keep growing and expanding.

David Boyles, GIS Means Business, 2002

Simon Thompson, 2011 Localization, not Location

K Richardson, 2010. Leveraging GIS to enhance Shopping Centre Performance

Cumberland Times News, 2009.

http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis