by Jeff Hincy

Have you ever wondered how film makers get all that fancy imagery in their movies?  You would assume it costs thousands of dollars and they have to jump through hoops to get it.  Well you too can be a multi-million dollar film maker with the imagery that comes standard with Business Analyst Desktop.

Ok, well maybe that is not entirely true, but you can access some of the latest satellite and aerial imagery with the click of a few buttons.  The ImageConnect toolbar in Business Analyst Desktop is a gateway to some of the best imagery in the business provided by DigitalGlobe. 

Recently we have added a new dataset of imagery to Business Analyst through the ImageConnect toolbar.  It provides our clients with the most up to date imagery that DigitalGlobe has to offer.  It ranges from complete aerial coverage of the United States at up to 1 meter resolution to .3 meter satellite imagery taken from the QuickBird satellite that contains "deep strip coverage of urban, rural and coastal areas."  You can investigate a new market using imagery as recent as last quarter.

For those of you who have not explored this incredible resource yet, the ImageConnect toolbar is included with Business Analyst Desktop.  It allows you to connect directly to the DigitalGlobe image server and download high resolution satellite and aerial imagery directly into your map and save them for later analysis and viewing.  As long as you have internet access you have unlimited access to these images.

The imagery accessed from the ImageConnect toolbar contains not only the most current imagery but historical imagery that can be used to see things such as construction trends in a market.  It is also important to note that before downloading your image you should examine the available imagery in your market to decide which attribute is the most important for your analysis.  Sometimes vintage is the most important attribute but other times resolution can as or more important.  By default the ImageConnect toolbar will select an image based on a combination of attributes such as resolution, data source, and vintage.  To view a list of available imagery simply click the ImageConnect button and then select ImageConnect Data Library.  From this dialog you will a list of the available imagery at your current map scale and you can select the appropriate image to download for your analysis.

You might be curious how to access this wonderful new data update.  Let me show you how to access it.

Step 1: Launch Business Analyst. 

Step 2: From the Main Menu you will see an ImageConnect menu option. Click the ImageConnect button and select ImageConnect Properties.

Step 3: From the Data Layers drop-down menu select Country Coverage and hit OK.

That's it you are done.  You will have to do this for each computer that Business Analyst is installed on and these preferences will be saved so you won't have to go back and do this again.

 -Jeff

  by Sooria Jeyaraman

By now I’m sure you must have explored the new comparison reports in Business Analyst Online, if not I would strongly urge you to do so. It is one of our marquee features that some of our users are craving for. I will let you know some more tricks in the feature that will make your job easier. Hypothetical scenario – I am interested in a couple of locations near Mira mesa, San Diego. I want to know about the demographics of people living in 5, 10, 15 minute drive time of this location. I also want to know how these locations fare in comparison with its ZIP code, County and also benchmark it against my successful location in Redlands.

Hmmm.. how could I do this? Do I need to create all these as separate sites and get reports and add them manually in excel to compare!! No that’s when our new comparison reports come to your rescue. Let’s first create the two drive time sites.

 

Now go to “Get Reports” tab, click “Create Comparison Reports” and these two sites will be automatically selected in the site panel, add your successful Redlands site to it. These three sites will be shown in step 1 as sites selected.

On step 2 open the ZIP code dropdown, now that lists all the ZIP codes that your sites belong too (sweet huh!), select your desired ZIP code and now move on to the County dropdown which will list all the counties that your sites belong too, pick your interested county.

 

Now move on to step 3, an option to pick your benchmark. Open the dropdown and you can see all the sites selected, its respective geographies and not just that you have options to benchmark it against the “Average” and “Median” of your selected sites. Now for our walkthrough let’s pick your successful Redlands site.

 

On step 4 let’s say we are interested to look at the Income variables, go ahead and click the “Income” button. Here’s what you would get once you click the button in step 4.

You get an UI with the graphs with the benchmarked site as the first site and your selected sites with the ZIP code and county of your selection. It’ll be better if I explain each of the elements on this page one by one with highlights.

1.       View toggle button lets you switch between this graph view and a tabular view where you can just look at the sites and variables in plain numbers in a table format.

2.       Variables dropdown lets you select/deselect the variables you would like to be displayed in the graph/table.

3.       Graph legend represents each variable and the bar color associated with it

4.       Year toggle lets you see our five year projection for the selected variables.

5.       Dropdowns below each site name lets you change the individual drive time to be displayed in the graph.

6.       Finally you can also print and save the information in excel for further reference.

On the top you have tabs to switch between our other popular variables “Population” “Households” “Housing” and the last tab “Customize” lets you create your own set of variables – more on that in my next blog on the same subject, watch out.

Before you go, I would also suggest you to visit our friend and fellow blogger Kyle’s scribbling in his blog post about benchmark report in Business Analyst Desktop.

Happy Comparing!

-          SJ

Market Potential reports are here!  Come and get 'em! 

The Market Potential reports provide measures of the probable demand for a product or service in a defined geographic area.  

The following Market Potential reports are now available in Business Analyst Online:

• Electronic and Internet Market Potential
• Financial Investments Market Potential
• Health and Beauty Market Potential
• Pets and Products Market Potential
• Restaurant Market Potential
• Retail Market Potential
• Sports and Leisure Market Potential

Based on survey data and updated annually, these reports include the expected number of consumers and a Market Potential Index (MPI) that measures the likelihood that households in a specified area will exhibit certain consumer behaviors compared to the U.S. national average.

There are some really fascinating and detailed variables in the reports, such as the estimated number of adults who ate at Quiznos or the Cheesecake Factory in the last six months.

With these reports you can...

• Analyze markets by product type, brand, and purchase patterns to determine if your product would be profitable in the area.
• Consider changes and expansions to your product mix based on consumer product demand in the area.
• Study competitive products penetration by brand, price, and options, and devise marketing campaigns based on the findings.

To see samples click here.  Reports are available for $75 each or in your choice of add-on report packages in Business Analyst Online.

Cheers!

by Kyle Watson

Hello blog readers,

This is a story about "which side of the tracks" you are on and how demographic analysis comes into play.  More importantly how to identify certain anomalies when one side is completely opposite of the other - and the sum doesn't equal its parts.

To illustrate this point let's say we are a national franchising organization.  Hundreds of new applications come in a month each with three or four proposed sites.  Our commercial real estate group then gives us analysis, maps, and reports of newly proposed franchises.  We spec out the sites, they come back with the goods.  They hand us a "PASS/FAIL" report that tells us if we've met our initial criteria.

The initial criteria is always:

• A 7-mile radius
• Population of 250k - 350k
• Average Household Income of $120k (+/- 20%)
  

So this is what we get back in a nice report.  If the three variables are not met - FAIL.  And we move on to different proposed sites.  If the criteria is met - PASS.  We further breakdown the area and continue with the suitability process.

Below is an example PASS/FAIL map (of which I annotated to show the anomalies).  At first glance all criteria is a match, right? 

WRONG! 

We take a more in-depth and determine that even though the average household income of the 7-mile ring is $121k, there aren't any block groups in the surrounding area that are actually in the $121k range.  Here we are dealing with a real life situation where the north side of the proposed location (the working class Pontiac, MI area) and the south side (one of the most affluent areas in the U.S., Bloomfield Hills, MI) border each other back-to-back.  Polar opposites. 

The extreme differences in demographic makeup cause an anomaly, thus we can't consider the 7-mile ring a uniformly, normalized area.  In this case the medians and averages for the ring don't tell us the whole story.

This concept is often related to ecological fallacy.  Take, for example the linear graphic below.  This is a representative situation of the map above.  The average and median are not representative of any data considered.

Quite often when averages are skewed, medians are the next in line for analysis.  In this case neither help.  You could split the regions into a north and south trade area (which I did using the Draw Area tool in Business Analyst desktop), but this only reaffirms that one side is too low and the other is too high.  The common practice remaining is to expand your PASS/FAIL criteria.  You may need to add a second tier of demographic qualifiers (competitors, age, race, market saturation) before making a final decision.

I hope the above reaffirms the notion that unless you do analysis in an evenly distributed Utopian society, make sure you understand the data.  And add in some secondary checks to ensure you make the right decision.

Cheers,

Kyle - born in a Pontiac - Watson

   by Lucy Guerra 

Hey there, here's a little something you may not know about Address Coder.  For those of you using Tapestry segmentation to classify your customer or member lists, did you know that Address Coder allows you to create your own "master" grouping? That's right - you can group Tapestry segments together into your own groups.

Let's say you've geocoded and Tapestry appended customer lists and learned over time that your best, most profitable customers come from two segments:  6 - Sophisticated Squires and 12 - Up and Coming Families.  And that you always seem to have a lot of customers in segment 17 - Green Acres, even though they tend not to be the most profitable customers.  With Address Coder, you can create your own "master" groups to be displayed on the first page of the Tapestry Profile Report: ‘My Best Customers' - all the customer records in 6 - Sophisticated Squires and 12 - Up and Coming Families and ‘My Potential Customers' - all the records in 17 - Green Acres.

To do this, go to the Summary Group Editor found under the File menu.

Then click ‘Add New' to create a new grouping. (Here it's named My Summary Group.) ‘Create' collections for each group: My Best Customers and My Potential Customers.

Now when you setup a new geocoding, data appending, and report job, you'll be able to choose the new grouping from the Report Options tab:

In this way, you've made it easy to get a quick snapshot of any future customer lists: how many fall into your best, most profitable customer group, and how many fall into your potential customer group.

Like the 12 LifeMode groups, which reflect lifestyles/life stages, and the 11 Urbanization groups, which show levels of affluence and population density, your own custom Tapestry group gives you another way to look at the big picture of your customers or members.

For more information about Address Coder, please visit: www.esri.com/coder.

by Kyle Watson

Let's take a stroll into the retail industry...

Daniel Howes of The Detroit News wrote a column recently about Meijer, Inc. looking to open a superstore in Detroit, Michigan.  Meijer, a Midwest-based "everything-under-one-roof" grocery retailer has no current stores within the city limits.  In fact no one does.  There are no major retail grocery chains in a city, that according to ESRI's 2009 demographic estimates, is home to 864,744 people.  That is a shocking thought.  Here in small-town-charm Redlands, we have SEVEN!

But as Howes writes, there looks to be an urban trend of supply & demand brewing, one that I find interesting:

"We have numbers that show $1.7 billion is spent by Detroiters outside Detroit for retail," says George Jackson, president of the quasi-public Detroit Economic Growth Corp. "That's a powerful number. Building something in the city ... gives a store like Meijer a competitive advantage.

Among Meijer's operating assumption (apparently shared by rival Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s "urban strategy") is that higher fuel prices and generational migration to more densely populated areas will revitalize urban areas abandoned by developers a generation ago. Revenue and, perhaps, loyalty will accrue to those who arrive first."

Hope you found this interesting, take a look at the whole article - there are plenty of good snippets on the industry and economy.

If I were doing this analysis with the Business Analyst products, some tools and features that come to mind are:  The Retail MarketPlace Profile Report to measure gaps in supply versus demand, the Businesses and Shopping Center Reports to understand what industry competitors are around you, and using Consumer Spending data with Spatial Overlay to analyze the potential buying power of your future shoppers.  Of course you'd may want to dabble with some Huff Modeling to determine the attractiveness of that new grocery superstore locale.

Cheers,

Kyle