Modeling with Demographic Dimensions
Retail performance models have long utilized trade area demographics to explain differences in store sales, and for good reason – the relationship between the demographic characteristics of a store trade area and its performance are both obvious and well understood. At its simplest level, such models take the classic form of a linear regression model […]
The Dog Days of Summer
We’ve all heard the phrase “the dog days of summer”. But where did this phrase come from? We use the phrase to refer to those hot and humid days of mid-summer, but it originates from ancient Greek culture. It was related to the rising of the star system Sirius, which in Hellenistic astrology was the […]
Cubit Planning
Over ten years ago, I was complaining to my friend, Anthony, how painful it was to pull Census demographic data for engineering projects. Anthony said that he could build a tool to automate this painful task. We partnered up and used seed funding from a local incubator to build a working app that produced demographic […]
The Purpose of Analytics
Many years ago, the company I worked for produced a business/daytime population report for radius studies. We did not have a complete business list but rather used the County Business Patterns which provides unedited (dirty) data at the ZIP code level only (not detailed) for the previous year (not particularly timely). The notion that we […]
Spatial Patterns of College Students and Graduates
August is often an exciting time in college towns, as waves of college students head back to their campuses all across the United States. Where exactly do these students live, and where do they live once they graduate? And what is the makeup of these small towns? As we look at the map of adults […]
Distance Weighted Panorama Profiles
Last week, we introduced distance weighting to trade area analysis to show the value of understanding the internal patterns within a trade area. Here we use a similar concept and apply it to the common practice of building a customer profile using Panorama segmentation. Recently, we were asked to help with a project to find […]
FAQ: CrimeRisk
The CrimeRisk score for my area is 208. What does that actually mean? CrimeRisk scores are indexed to the national level, which is given a score of 100. A value of 100 for a local area means that its expected risk is about equal to the national average. A score of 200 indicates that we […]
Introducing Distance Adjusted Trade Areas
Most of the simple site selection methods pioneered several decades ago are still widely used despite their known shortcomings. We all know fully well that the probability that a resident will be a customer is much higher if that customer lives one mile away than if they live five miles away. Despite this general awareness, […]
Vacation Preferences
Typically, summer months are filled with family fun, and usually, it is the most popular time to go on vacation. Of course, this year is anything but typical. We wanted to look at vacation preferences for a typical year. Where do people go? Are they truly going on vacation, or visiting friends and family? We […]
Freeway Drive Time Enhancements: Resolution Levels
In addition to the expansion to global coverage and a much expanded road classification, Freeway now supports multiple levels of resolution. The original model included only two resolution levels – normal and detailed – which were at the 500’ and 2500’ grid levels. Our new model includes four resolutions to cover a broader range of […]
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