How to Boost Your Business with Location Data: Retail Stores & Chains

Part 1 | #BoostYourBusiness Series

According to a recent survey performed by the Pew Research Center, 95 percent of Americans now own a cell phone. Of those, 77 percent own a smartphone.^[1] With the majority of the population constantly connected to the internet on their mobile phones, the many ways business can use location data have never been more abundant.

While most modern businesses are finding success through location data, one specific industry is standing out from the crowd at the moment: retail. Here are three examples of how retail businesses are leveraging location data to target consumers and improve results:

Pick the Ideal Retail Location

Selecting an ideal site for a new store or office used to be a shot in the dark. These days, with the amount of consumer information available to businesses, identifying the ideal location based on location-based analytics has never been easier. Geo-analytics tools make it easy to see the geographical dispersion, demographics, consumer metrics and even drive times. Using this information, businesses can select an ideal location for their next shop to ensure the maximum amount of foot traffic.

Help Them Navigate

For larger retailers, location data is great for helping improve the customer experience and boosting sales. Barney’s, for example, uses beacons to see how their customers are behaving online and in-store. This helps Barney’s see, calculate and manage foot traffic to generate live product recommendations based on customers’ shopping cart history or location within the store.^[4, 5]

With customers becoming more in-tune with the online shopping services available to them, it’s important for retailers to develop a business strategy that targets this new generation of digital consumers. As a result, many businesses are turning to location data for a solution.

For businesses using Salesforce, Geopointe is the ideal solution for their location data needs. Geopointe helps businesses geographically visualize their data and improve their business processes using features such as geo-analysis, automated territory management, routing and route optimization, and much more.