Customer Profiling with Enterprise Sales Data: Identifying distinctive customer characteristics

Introduction

Two years ago, Janice Brown and Steven Bent opened the first Living in the Green Lane store in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Their concept, a home center for environmentally concerned consumers, has been very successful. Their core customers have been "green" consumers who are motivated either by environmental concerns or the economic savings available from green technologies (Schaefer 2007). These consumers tend to have higher levels of income, education, and home value than the general population of the United States (Kannan 2007).

In the past two years, the store has surpassed projected sales, established a solid base of customers (especially with its Living Green loyalty club, with almost 600 members), and achieved a reputation in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as an innovative advocate of green building products and techniques.

To build on this success, Living in the Green Lane's owners plan to grow their business in two ways: by (1) increasing sales to current customers with the green lifestyle concept and (2) opening new stores to increase sales from new customers in the market area.

This SpatiaLAB focuses on the first of these growth strategies. Your challenge is to create a profile of Living in the Green Lane's existing customers and use it to identify opportunities for increasing sales to this group by selectively expanding the firm's line of products and services.

Location

Minneapolis-St. Paul core-based statistical area

Time to complete the lab

Four to six hours

Prerequisites

An understanding of the importance of customer profiling in developing marketing strategies

Access to Esri Business Analyst Desktop Premium 10

Data used in this lab

Demographic and consumer spending data at various levels of geography

Tapestry Segmentation data

Market Potential Index values from GfK Mediamark Research & Intelligence, LLC (GfK MRI)