Basic Business Environment Analysis: Using thematic maps to find opportunities and threats

Introduction

Janice Brown and Steven Bent plan to open a new home center in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The center, called Living in the Green Lane, will offer a variety of environmentally friendly building products, home improvement products, and construction technologies.

To develop a business plan for this enterprise, Janice and Steven must analyze the market environment in the Twin Cities area to determine if this area will support such an enterprise. This analysis involves seeking out "green" customers, identifying potential competitors, examining transportation patterns, and pinpointing retail centers that draw consumer traffic.

Janice and Steven have discovered that green customers tend to have higher levels of income, education, and home value than the general population of the United States. They have directed you, in your capacity as the firm's business geographic information system (GIS) analyst, to use GIS resources to explore the distribution of households with these characteristics in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market area to determine if it can support their business plan.

Specifically, you will use color-coded mapping and symbology tools to map these relevant demographic characteristics in the planned market area.

Location

Minneapolis-St. Paul core-based statistical area

Time to complete the lab

Four to six hours

Prerequisites

An understanding of the importance of environmental scanning in the process of developing marketing strategy

Access to Esri Business Analyst Desktop Premium 10

Data used in this lab

Demographic and consumer spending data at various levels of geography

Major highways and streets

Business listings

Shopping center listings