Trade Area and Site Reporting: Mapping market patterns and screening potential sites

Introduction

Janice Brown and Steven Bent wish to open a new retail home center in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Their green home center, Living in the Green Lane, would focus its product and service lines on environmentally friendly technologies, building techniques, and home maintenance support. Janice and Steven must develop a business plan to persuade bankers and investors to support this initiative. Their first task is to define a profile for green-home-building consumers and seek concentrations of these households in the area. Then they must identify an appropriate site for a retail store to serve this target segment. Their preference is to renovate an existing retail facility to demonstrate the value of the green building techniques and products to be featured in their store.

Janice has researched "green consumers" and chosen income, education, and home value as the demographic factors she will use in defining Living in the Green Lane's target customers. She has asked you to use the business geographic information system (GIS) tools provided by the Twin Cities Redevelopment Task Force (TCRTF) to evaluate the market area in general as well as a specific facility that is available for purchase from the task force.

Specifically, you will use online resources to perform color-coded mapping of relevant demographic variables, define a market area for the task force site, select an alternative potential location, and compare the two locations to determine if Janice and Steven should purchase the task force site.

Location

Minneapolis-St. Paul core-based statistical area (CBSA)

Time to complete the lab

Four to six hours

Prerequisites

Introductory experience with a geographic information system and familiarity with business analysis terminology

Data used in this lab

Demographic and consumer spending data at various levels of geography

Major highways and streets

Demographic, lifestyle, and American Community Survey (ACS) data

Standard reports