Operations Management - optimising store planning for your catchment

The challenge

A major retailer was opening a new store. Following some previous work by Datamine which had highlighted differences between individual stores depending on catchment area, our client wanted to understand the likely purchasing preferences of customers in their catchment area, in order to optimise their planning.

Being a new store with no existing sales information, the site could not be analysed in the same way as previous stores and there was clearly no “typical” store to use as a template for planning purposes.

The solution

Datamine identified the catchment area of the new store and developed a Census profile of its likely customers. Because Datamine had undertaken previous analytics for this retailer, they were able to identify similar store catchments and look at the purchasing behaviour of people who lived in similar areas. The results were adjusted based on competition in the area.

From this analysis, Datamine was able to deliver a comprehensive profile of the likely customers to the new store, the group of stores that the new one fits into, the products purchased in stores with the most similar catchments and some recommendations for moving forward.

The result

The results of this project enabled our client to take a more informed position for effective range planning, by understanding the demographic profile of its new customers and having greater confidence in their likely purchasing behaviour.