Know your catchment !

The total catchment area , of a store is an useful information to have

before deciding a store location and post store opening marketing energies focus .The catchment analysis is usually done to study the profile of consumers likely to visit in terms of income profile , current shopping destinations and the likely visit to the new store , based on that make some sort of business predictions and also useful in the " yes " or " no " decision .

Generally it could be considered that major retailers like department stores, furniture warehouses would be destination sites. These sites could attract people from greater distances because the items are not common purchases, are expensive or provide the opportunity where a number of purchases can be made from the one location. For these destination sites it is possible for consumers to travel 10 or more kilometers. The way to find the catchment spread is too have a robust loyalty program which captures the pin codes of consumers and uses that for mapping the areas .if you dont have a loyalty program then you could have to decipher intelligent ways of finding your catchment .

Similarly a small neighbour hood store , or a small departmental store , wud have a catchment spread of not more than 1.5 km .

For retailers that offer the same or very similar products as the competition, unless there is a very strong pricing difference a customer may not be prepared to travel pass the competition. Catchment analyis is useful like any other market research in showing retailers the opportunity and the direction to be taken .