Expansion Planning Using Heat Maps
Problem: Need to Transform New Product Success into New Market Opportunities
ABC Furniture manufacturing manufactures and distributes furniture through show rooms across the Eastern USA. The ABC reclining chair profits have proved to be significant and the company is interested in developing the market further. The best way to accomplish this is to either build showrooms or partner with showrooms in underserved areas.
Solution: Visualize Sales with MBO Heat Map - Find ZIP Codes for Growth
ABC uses MapBusinessOnline to graphically display where sales most often occur, and by omission, where they do not occur at all. The MBO ZIP code layer is turned on and color coded to reflect ZIP codes with the highest Median Income per Population, a ratio calculation. These rust red colored ZIP codes should be the best target areas for growth.
Next, a dataset of 2016 recliner sales by outlet address is imported into MBO and turned into a Heat Map layer. The brighter blue hot spots reflect areas of intense sales, the cooler darker spots show less sales, and again by omission, reflect areas with no sales that are under consideration for better representation.
How to Create a Retail Sales Heat Map
- Make sure your data records have at least two columns. One column for location and a second column with numeric data describing your subject – in this case, sales of recliners
- Import your location or address based dataset into MapBusinessOnline
- Click the Heat Map Button on the Master Toolbar
- Select your target data set and make sure the numeric data column is selected
- Choose an appropriate color scheme and an intensity setting
- Process your heat map
To display the heat map against a demographic scheme:
- Turn on the ZIP code layer
- In Map & Data, hover over the ZIP code layer and click the Edit Gear. Choose Manage Calculated Data Columns. Add a Data Column, name it, and pick the operation parameters – Overall Population/High Med Income
- Use the Color Code Map button, accessing your Calculated Data option (from 2) and color code ZIP codes to best reflect your target market
Your best ZIP codes for new showrooms supporting new sales opportunities will be ZIP codes with optimum demographics and no sales activity, and nearby ZIP codes with optimum demographics close to areas with maximum sales activity, perhaps within a specific drive time distance of existing stores – for example an hour’s drive away.
Learn How Our Customers are Succeeding with MapBusinessOnline
A leading provider of automated storage and retrieval systems, Kardex Remstar has a multi-layered distribution network in North America. Mapping regional sales territories and sales districts using ZIP codes and states. Kardex Remstar tapped into MBO territory creation services to make the process quick and easy. Detailed ZIP code tables were converted by MapBusinessOnline into multiple maps describing their distribution network, sales coverage by customer segment, and product maps.
"The product is phenomenal and the support even better."
Sales Manager
Kardex
This leading national footwear brand manufacturer uses MapBusinessOnline to conduct retail coverage assessments nationwide. They loved MBO’s ability to provide both street level detail and USA wide high level views of points-of-sale. Importing location enabled address databases for symbolization and color shading is easy. New and planned stores can be added to the map market analysis as products are launched and mature.
"Importing location enabled address databases for symbolization and color shading is easy."
Todd Eichelberger
Sales Director
Adidas
"We've tried the REST now we are using the BEST. After searching and trying other mapping programs for our delivery operations team and finding that we just couldn't get all the features that we required, we finally found MapBusinessOnline. Not only did it have all the features we needed including Longitude/Latitude and optimizing delivery routes, but it provided us tons of other bells and whistles. MBO proved to be a superb tool for our operations team to create routes and territories with the click of a few buttons while also allowing our reporting team to make beautiful maps that help our executive team visualize the story the data was telling. We are using this for the 2nd year in a row and will be renewing when it is time again. We pride ourselves at offering cutting edge applications to our millions of readers and subscribers worldwide and love that MBO helps us stay ahead of the technology curve by continuing to update their product and features. The release of MBO for the Desktop was a great addition and only helps make using the product even easier. To the staff at MBO — Keep up the great work!"
Dow Jones
Popular MapBusinessOnline features
Emphasize customers density with heat maps
Color code maps by ZIP code, county, or state
Display business data against demographic maps
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