Finding Market Opportunities: Understanding the market environment spatially

Introduction

Bikes2Go is the startup enterprise of Bill Ivers and Karen Estes, avid recreational bicycle riders and recent university graduates in a large Southwestern city. Karen and Bill have noticed that their town and others they have visited have bike rental and repair shops near larger parks and recreational areas but lack them near smaller recreational facilities such as neighborhood parks and school playgrounds.

Further research reveals that these smaller areas do not generate the traffic necessary to support full-scale bike rental and repair shops. Thus, the trails and bike paths in these facilities tend to be underutilized.

Karen and Bill view this situation as an opportunity for developing a business model for bike shop functions that can be profitable at relatively low sales volume. Working with fellow bike enthusiasts, they develop the prototype for an automated, self-service bike rental and repair kiosk that can be located in a modest space near smaller parks and recreation areas.

Bill and Karen hire you as their research consultant and charge you with finding a good place to test market the Bikes2Go rental and repair (R&R) concept.

You will use web-based business geographic information system (GIS) tools for your work.

Location

Seattle, Washington, urban area

Time to complete the lab

60 to 90 minutes

Prerequisites

An understanding of the importance of environmental scanning in the marketing planning process

Access to arcgis.com with a web browser

Data used in this lab

Demographic and consumer spending data at various levels of geography

Location data for parks and bike shops

Consumer expenditure data