Catchment area: how to properly define it?
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Introduction
When you are considering opening a new point of sale or if your business is already established, it is important to carry out a catchment area study in order to understand the needs of your current or future visitors, and thus measure your growth potential.
Definition of a catchment area
The ideal location of any business must necessarily be in an appropriate area, which concentrates the largest part of its potential customers and which offers maximum visibility. But how do you determine this one 🤔? To assess the potential of a commercial space, we study its catchment area, that is to say the geographical area from which the majority of its customers come.
An essential element of a commercial strategy,catchment area study makes it possible to understand the challenges and motivations of customers in their choice of visits to a point of sale. It is ideal for preparing a marketing action plan adapted to visitors and non-visitors. 💡
Why define a catchment area?
Make a study of your catchment area can only be useful for you, whether your business is already established or if you plan to set up soon.
If you are planning to set up your business...
... It's themarket study what you need 😉! One catchment area study is recommended when the commercial project involves the opening of a physical point of sale. The characteristics of your zone must be adapted to your goals.
Analyze one or more catchment areas allows you to:
- 👥 Define the profile and the number of your potential customers
- 💡 Compare the potential of the different locations considered
- 👌 Define a forecast turnover
- 🔍 Avoid it Cannibalization if you have other businesses nearby
- 👀 Evaluate the competition and attractiveness of future businesses
If your business is already established...
... Studying its location is useful to improve your knowledge about your catchment area. THEcatchment area study makes it possible to evaluate the market according to social and geographical criteria that help to make appropriate strategic choices 😎. THEcatchment area study you therefore makes it possible to determine the measures to be taken to optimize your network. But also:
- 🤔 Know the origin of your business traffic
- 🌍 Implement actions to extend its geographical influence
- 🔍 Improve the targeting of your customers by optimizing your communication plans
- 🧠 Establish strategies to retain your customers and attract new prospects
- 💡 Identify the obstacles to the visit and the points for improvement: layout, reception, parking, communication...
To optimize the marketing actions of your business, it is essential to know where the majority of your customers come from, in order to target these areas as a priority with communication campaigns or satisfaction surveys for example.
Catchment area: What you need to know
Factors that influence your catchment area
To get a relevant analysis of your catchment area, various factors must be taken into account:
👀 The competition : An indispensable criterion, analyzing the level of competition in your catchment area is essential to improve your offers by comparing them to those of other businesses.
🚗 Means of access : Customers' access to a point of sale is conditioned by the distance to be covered and the time required to reach it.
😎 The attractiveness of the site : It is all the elements related to the location of the business, such as the transport network, traffic routes, the presence of a commercial area, a school...
🤔 Consumer buying behavior : Of course, the buying habits of your customers and prospects also represent a major criterion.
The different types of catchment areas
To assess the catchment area of your business, you must first calculate and trace it. To do this, various methods or curves are used. Thus, we obtain:
- The isochronous zone : Bounded by isochronous curves, it is based on the travel time of individuals to reach the point of sale.
- The isometric zone : It is traced with isometric curves and takes into account the area around the point of sale.
The different levels of your catchment area
Depending on your business and the profile of your prospects, your catchment area is divided into three levels:
- La primary zone, the main area that concentrates the majority of your target customers. It is an area of significant commercial influence in which consumers are very close to the business. In this zone, you have few or no competitors 👌.
- The secondary zone, larger but less influential than the primary zone. It brings together your close customers as well as your competitors. In this area, you need to stand out and retain your targets with communication actions.
- The tertiary zone, with a very weak influence, it is a commercially colder and wider sector, with few target customers.
Finally, we can also talk about the “out of zone”, which is located outside your catchment area. In this space, customers are only passing through and the attractiveness of your point of sale is almost zero.
The study of your catchment area with Discurv!
In the past, businesses used a variety of methods to assess their catchment areas, such as loyalty cards or the postal codes of their customers. However, there was a high risk of inaccuracies and the data was not always up to date... 😕
Today, these shortcomings can easily be corrected thanks to geolocation and Discurv's ultra-targeted studies ! According to their needs, Discurv realizes and supports its customers in their catchment area studies under 2 scenarios:
Before commercial establishment:
Before opening your business, you must study your catchment area in order to understand consumer habits, commercial, competitive and demographic contexts. To validate your implementation project, you can trust Discurv and its geolocated studies 😎! Our ultra-precise targeting tools on Social networks allow us to interview different profiles, such as people who are used to frequenting a commercial area, residents of a city or neighborhood to the nearest mile, or even those who abandon a point of sale.
For example, to validate the establishment of the supermarkets of a major German chain, Discurv produces targeted questionnaires on these future businesses with hundreds, even thousands of inhabitants, depending on the area to be interviewed. Our targeting capabilities 🌍 allow us to interview residents of primary areas, or even to interview even more local targets at the scale of a specific neighborhood. These surveys help the company to assess the interest of opening supermarkets among potential customers and to adjust the levers available such as parking, storefront, communication, reception, traffic...
After commercial establishment:
Know The real area of origin of your customers helps to assess and optimize the performance of your commercial location. 👍 Our post-implementation studies allow, for example, to adjust communication plans to reach a specific local target, to measure the level of satisfaction of store visitors or even to assess the impact of a campaign local targeted at frequenters and non-frequenters, or inhabitants of a specific area level (primary, secondary or tertiary).
To give you an example, we make catchment area studies for the shopping centers of the real estate company in Auchan. The objective is to regularly analyze their various catchment areas and survey their visitors/and non-visitors in order to:
- 👀 Measuring the image and reputation of shopping centers
- 😎 Establishing the typical profile of visitors
- 🧠 Understand the reasons for courtship or the dropouts
- 🔍 Identify satisfaction factors (NPS)
- 😉 Determine the preferred means of communication in order to generate traffic
Quotas by frequency of visit and area of residence are applied to obtain a more detailed reading of the results. Thanks to our studies, Discurv helps you to revitalize the number of visitors to your business or store by relying on authentic data, collected via social networks 😌.
Conclusion
As you will have understood, analyze a catchment area plays a key role in the success of a business 😉. The characteristics of a geographical location must be adapted to the objectives of the company. Discurv thus supports numerous retailers and commercial real estate companies upstream of their establishment or downstream, to measure the level of notoriety, the frequentation habits of inhabitants and passengers in a catchment area as well as the competitive dynamic.
Do you want to know more? 😉 Do not hesitate to visit our FAQ page, or contact us to share with us your needs in terms ofcatchment area studies !
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