Having the right mix of businesses in your community is vital. Use Placer’s foot traffic intelligence to attract new retailers, restaurants, and entertainment venues that are well-matched to population demographics and needs, well-located physically, and aligned with existing businesses. Quantify reach, alleviate cannibalization concerns, prove an audience match, and show the benefits of co-tenancy within specific centers.

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

1. Which businesses are a good fit for your community?
2. How can you demonstrate the traffic and reach of specific locations to prospective businesses?
3. How can you evaluate visitor affinity and alleviate concerns about cannibalization?

(For the purpose of this example, Staples Plaza in Yorktown Heights, NY is trying to attract a Trader Joe’s)

Get started with the following steps:

Step 1: Analyze visitation traffic for specific properties within your community

Open the Placer report for the POI^{Point (Location) of Interest.}. Add one or more POIs (use the plus sign to add and click Go) for comparison purposes and choose your preferred date range (default is the last 12 months). Analyze the estimated number of customers and visits (Metrics), the visit trends (Visits Trend), visits at any time of day (Hourly Visits), visits by day of the week (Daily Visits), and how long visitors spend at your POI (Length of Stay).

Step 2: Analyze True Trade Area to discover the reach and draw of specific centers

a. Navigate to Trade Area^{Representation of the dispersion of home and work locations that drive traffic to any venue.} in the left sidebar. Understand visitors’ True Trade Areas and see the distance in miles required for visitors to reach the property. Filter by visitors’ home or work location, and by visit frequency to understand the travel patterns of more loyal visitors.

Learn about Trade Area

b. Address cannibalization concerns by determining trade area overlaps. Navigate to Trade Area in the left sidebar and scroll to Trade Area Overlap. Here you see that there is very minimal overlap between the trade areas of Staples Plaza in Yorktown Heights, NY, and Trader Joe’s (first add Trader Joe’s by using the plus sign and clicking Go).

Learn about Trade Area Overlap

c. Review visitor demographics for a specific center and compare them to the target business. Navigate to Demographics in the left sidebar and refer to Audience Profile. Use the drop-down to add the target business so a comparison can be made. Select the trade area type you’d like to use for the report (True Trade Area, Drive Time, Walk Time, or Distance in Miles).

d. There are several datasets to choose from in the dataset drop-down menu to compare the trade areas. If the datasets are not visible in the menu, click View more Datasets to add them. Index scores can be read as percentages. For example, a score of 110 can be inferred to mean that the figure is 10% above the base average of 100; a score of 90 represents a figure 10% below the base average.

Step 3: Illustrate how a specific center (with its tenants) and/or business ranks to demonstrate success

a. Navigate to Ranking^{Shows where the venue/complex is ranked within its chain and/or category.} in the left sidebar. View the performance of a specific center (and any existing tenant) or specific business you want to evaluate.

b. Adjust the view to compare the performance of an existing business to others in the chain.

Learn about Ranking Overview

‍Step 4: Evaluate visitor affinity and demonstrate fit

a. Prove that there is an audience match by determining if visitors to a specific location already have a relationship with a prospective business. Navigate to Visitor Journey^{The flow of commercial activity to and from any property that shows the top "Prior" and "Post" locations.} in the left sidebar. Scroll to Favorite Chains, select the relevant category (in this case Groceries), and review the results to see if your prospective business is listed. In this example, Trader Joe’s appears as one of Staples Plaza’s visitors’ favorite grocery chains (at least one visit in the last 12 months), showing the relationship between visitors of the center and the prospective business. Scroll to Favorite Places to determine the specific location of a particular venue that visitors to your center also frequent.

Learn about Favorite Chains

b. Demonstrate whether a location is a good fit by determining if visitors to existing businesses in your location already have a relationship with the prospective business. Navigate to Visitor Journey in the left sidebar. Scroll to Favorite Chains, select the relevant category (in this case, Groceries), and review the results to see if your prospective business is listed. In this example, visitors of Pet Supplies Plus frequent Trader Joe’s, implying a potentially good fit. Scroll to Favorite Places to determine the specific location.

Learn about Favorite Places