Geomarketing

Marketing research comprises acquiring, analyzing, and reporting information of sales, market shares, brand choice, existing and potential customers. A basis of many successful marketing strategies is market segmentation. There are different principles that markets can be segmented: geographic, demographic, physiographic, behavioral, cultural.

Geographic segmentation implies the regionalization by market size, population density and settlement, type of settlement, medium income, road and traffic conditions or even climate. Some brick and mortars are more interested in targeting neighborhoods located near the store in a 1-, 2- or 10-km radius. Others take into account people and traffic flow. Demographic segmentation takes into account age, gender, family size, medium income, and social profile. Culture segmentation divides consumers on the basis of race, ethnicity, culture, sub-culture, and education, which can vary substantially from one neighborhood to another. The cultural segmentation enables appropriate communications to be created to particular customers groups in various regions, countries, and neighborhoods.

The motto of any retail (grocery, bank, drug store, gas station, restaurant and café) business is “location, location, location.” Geomarketing allows for differentiating promising regions from unpromising areas, and revealing untapped marketing potential of new “unexplored” areas. Many retail and franchise businesses now use geomarketing analysis to determine which spots will be the most appropriate and profitable. 

Richard Church and Alan Murray in their notable book identify three laws of location science:

• Some locations are better than others for a given purpose. Efficient system locations tend to beat inefficient ones.
• Spatial context and urban geographic features can alter site efficiencies.
• Sites of an optimal multisite pattern must be selected simultaneously rather than independently, one at a time.

Geo-localized socio-economical information

Zesmill utilizes statistical, field, geolocation, remote sensing, traffic and people counting technologies to collect GIS-assisted and geo-localized socio-economical information including:

• population data detailed to neighborhood, city block, or even street level
• demographic profiles
• dwelling occupation
• grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, gas stations, restaurants and fast food distribution
• local businesses
• density of construction (per sq.km/mi, unit, neighborhood)
• development types including mixed-used developments
• education, health care, retail facilities, community center, park proximities (walking and driving distances)

Zesmill’s method of population estimate

Zesmill uses its unique method of population estimate by areas, neighborhoods, and blocks, within cities, towns, and suburbs. This method based on remote sensing data and field surveys and isn’t dependent on census data. Moreover, in the most cases it allows for obtaining more accurate data with a higher degree of completeness than official demographic sources.

Another advantage is a possibility to measure the actual number of people in certain area — daytime population and residential population, local residents and out-of-town visitors. The ratio between day and night population varies from 1:1 to 3:1. Typical examples are business and government districts in New York, Washington, DC, London, Brussels, and Tokyo. The ratio between local residents and tourists can vary even more.

Geomarketing and business mapping

Zesmill provides multinational and local companies with regional, city, and neighborhood fine-level geographic, demographic, social-economic and transport infrastructure data. Zesmill employs state of the art geographic data collection technologies and GIS methods, and can provide a range of services and strategies in geomarketing:

• location analysis
• evaluating the attractiveness of malls (cafés, stores, hotels etc.) location
• analysis of site and surroundings including location image, advertising options, proximity, people and traffic flow
• mapping competitor retail locations, logistics and promotion activity
• demographic and social profile surveys
• micro-economic regionalization
• identifying of catchment zones, service areas, and attraction areas
• proximity analysis
• areas and streets markets positioning; analysis of surplus and leakage for various sectors for defined areas
• market potential data for new markets in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe
• evaluation of marketplaces (cities, regions) for different market coverage strategies and choosing promotional strategies
• retail assortment monitoring and analysis at foreign locations
• visualizing the distribution of current and potential customers and target groups on maps

Off the shelf business maps (geodatabases)

Zesmill offers off the shelf business maps for countries, cities and metro areas which provide up-to-date, detailed, localized data about administrative and territorial division, population, development types, local businesses (malls and supermarkets, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, sport clubs, serviced office spaces etc.), roads and parking lots, railway stations, mass transit etc. All data are organized in a relational geodatabases and can be used to created maps. Data sets are available in multiple GIS formats: Esri shapefile, Esri geodatabase, Mapinfo, GeoJSON as well as KML files with attribute information, and GeoPDF.

Off the shelf business maps for cities and metropolitan areas (street/block level):

Europe — Amserfoort, Amsterdam, Amsterdam metro area, Arnhem/Westervoort, Bochum, Budva, Burgas, Cologne, Dortmund, Enschede, Essen, Groningen, Heraklion, Kharkiv, Kiev, Larisa, Leverkusen, Lviv, Minsk, Monaco/Monte-Carlo, Odessa, Podgorica, Plovdiv, Rotterdam, Sofia, Solingen/Ohligs, Tallinn, Thessaloniki, Varna, Zwolle.

Asia — Almaty, Astana, Baku, Batumi, Bursa, Colombo, Fethiye, Georgetown/Jelutong, Izmir, Kuala Lumpur, Kandy, Kutaisi, Petaling Jaya, Tbilisi

Russia — Moscow, Moscow metro area, Saint Petersburg, Perm, Saratov, Sochi, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg.

Off the shelf business maps for countries (town/city and county level):

Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Russia, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Ukraine.