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Seven Easy Ways to Use Location as a Service

Retail is a location-centric business. Every transaction; every customer’s home address, online search, and IP connection; every coupon offered and used; every delivery, store, and missed omni-channel purchase—each one of these can be analyzed and connected to any and every other action by location.
If retailers use location analytics delivered as a service to drive their omni-channel initiatives, they can know so much more about their customer interactions and expectations. Individual transactions become touch points along a journey to purchase, and new patterns emerge from oceans of data—islands of concrete value and understanding that grow and interconnect, linking silos and breaking down barriers.

Here are seven easy ways to use Location as a Service (LaaS) to bring new insight and add value to every transaction to gain a more intimate understanding of the customer:

  1. Match products to the people who most want them Identify the behavior and potential behind every transaction, purchaser, store, and delivery point by using drive times and distance.
  2. Identify and measure real similarities ,and differences Quantify the degree to which a consumer is similar or different from their neighbors with holistic insight which goes beyond demographics.
  3. Understand who, what, why, where, and when Turn transactions into quantitative analysis and hotspots. These help identify real patterns over time and place not simply correlations.
  4. Figure out who’s from where and why – Connect origin to destination and understand where people come from to work, shop, and play and what more they want and expect from you.
  5. Turn mobile interactions into digisheds of consumer segmentation – Go beyond where customers are from. Understand their behaviors and needs, brand penetration and who or what you’re missing.
  6. Turn segments into specifics – You need a segment of one. Individualize your customers by using differentiation techniques using geography.
  7. Dynamically localize to maximize opportunity and demand – See your customers as they see themselves and their neighbors. Don’t just change products, change relationships.

One of the most difficult tasks in business is changing mind-sets, not processes. There have already been thousands of conversations about localization, from designing new processes to developing tools and measures.
Very few, if any, of these discussions have put locale, or, more correctly, location, at the center of the strategy. Today, LaaS can deliver location analytics everywhere in your organization. Use location data wherever and whenever you need it. From spreadsheets and enterprise solutions to dedicated, customized software, LaaS delivers the data, analysis, and maps you need to take full advantage of your location-centric business.
Stop missing what might be right in front of you by retailing based on location.

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To learn more, read this white paper.

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