The Machete and The Scalpel of Site Selection

When deciding where to place your first location or next location of your business, we tend to work in two major chapters, or stages.  The first where we utilize radii to help us carve off huge chunks and eliminate what is not desirable, and find actually available sites for lease or purchase.  The next is cell phone data where we refine a specific trade area with precision to take into account true consumer behavior and movements within a trade area, as well as natural and artificial geographic boundaries.  

If radii are the machete of site selection then cell phone data is the scalpel used in the refinement of a market trade area.

Radii helps us to take huge chunks off of the target market out of consideration.  Usually focused around a trade area center point, retail center-point, or other point of interest depending on the asset or business needs.  These radii can be physical distance or drive time.  This helps us to focus on those center-points which present the least amount of competition, or perhaps with desirable analytical qualities.  Once these "rough" trade areas are established and qualified we are able to then search for specific sites of interest that are available to lease or purchase.  

Once it is determined the physical site is available, has the physical attributes we are looking for and falls within the "rough" area of interest, we are then able to run consumer cellphone data to understand what the path of travel is to the site in question.  Where are people coming from? where are they going?  in the case of a retail plaza, what entrance do they use most often?  Additionally it helps us to understand the impact on consumer movement's of a river that's in the trade area, or even a highway/bridge that might bisect the trade area.  So even if a certain consumer falls within a radii and would be considered part of the trade area if that was the only tool used, they may never actually go past that highway or other barrier, and turns the opposite direction to do the shopping or seek services.  

While radii, and cellphone data are both individually very powerful and useful in considering your business location, they are exponentially more powerful when used in conjunction with each other to promote efficiency of the process and nuance.