Business closings can significantly affect a shopping corridor, district, or downtown area, leading to changes in tax revenues and increased leakage as visitors go elsewhere. Placer's data can help you understand how a business closure impacts foot traffic, visitor behaviors, and leakage to other areas.

You’ll be able to answer these questions after reading this article:

1. How has foot traffic to your area of interest changed since the business closed? 
2. Has leakage increased since the closing of the business with residents visiting venues outside your area?
3. How does your area of interest compare to your competition since the business closed?

Get started with the following steps:

Use the Quick Compare Function to see data before and after the closing of interest

‍This feature allows you to view the same POI^{Point (Location) of Interest.} side-by-side, with different filters in place. In this example, a key grocer tenant closed on July 31, 2022. 

a. Open the Placer report for your POI, navigate to the three dots in the POI header bar, and click Quick Comparison. Immediately click Go to Report before adjusting any filters - this will open the same POI side-by-side.

b. From your new report view, click Add Filter. Choose Filter per Venue on the right, and then choose the custom dates you want to use. For example, since this new tenant closed July 31st, we use 2 months before the opening date, and 2 months after the opening date. Click Apply after choosing the respective filter and date range.

Learn about Quick Comparison

c. Now you have a simple view of this POI before and after the business closed. After the business closed, you can see that Visits decreased (Metrics), the center was ranked lower (Ranking Overview), and visitors’ average incomes were a bit lower (click on See full profile in the Typical Visitor Persona section). 

d. Click on Trade Area^{Representation of the dispersion of home and work locations that drive traffic to any venue.} in the left sidebar. Scroll down to Trade Area Overlap and you’ll see that the closing did not negatively impact reach (Total Trade Area).

Learn about Trade Area

Note: you can perform a similar search for nearby POIs (nearby cities, other shopping districts, etc.) to gauge how leakage has changed since the business closed.

Pro Tip: use Placer’s Advanced Brand Dominance tools for additional insights. Placer’s Brand Dominance is a raw data feed of foot traffic and rankings on the most popular premium retail chains in the U.S. It’s used to break down the performance of brands by visits and across industry categories. The data feed and Tableau interface are updated monthly. For more information on Brand Dominance or to request pricing information, click here.