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When it comes to gaining the competitive edge, an ever growing number of organisations are recognising the value of including Location Intelligence (LI) as a key element when conducting market research. ST Group CEO, Alan Ellis believes that Location Intelligence tools such as Pitney Bowes MapInfo are becoming critical in this field as it allows businesses added insight to market, plan, assign assets, track resources and manage services with the intelligent use of geographical data. ST Group is the preferred local partner for Pitney Bowes.
TNS Research Surveys, a leading market insight and information agency that conducts over 160,000 face-to-face interviews per year, strategically uses Location Intelligence in all aspects of its research processes – from the sample design to analysis and the final presentation to the client.
Says Dr. Ansie Lombaard, National Support Manager at TNS Research Surveys: “Location Intelligence offers a strategic advantage by allowing users to develop custom-made solutions. As a research tool, it provides a wide range of opportunities within our organisation to add value to both the research process and outcome. While firmly integrated with basic approaches, it goes beyond these to offer an environment in which we can create, store and synthesise information in new ways to achieve valuable research insight.”
The company uses the routing functions of Location Intelligence to produce maps for its field force, helping interviewers not only to easily find the specific location but also to orientate themselves within the area, indicating the different areas which they could visit during the same trip and which options will be most cost efficient.
“We also maintain all in-house population estimates, based on a multitude of sources, as part of our Location Intelligence system. This enables us to take into account the profile and density of the population when developing our field force and planning fieldwork,” Lombaard explains. “In fact, working in a spatial environment helps us to directly relate population figures to the location of our field force. Again, the Local Intelligence capacity is highly cost effective without compromising the integrity of the sample.
“Another key benefit is that the available functions make „intelligent‟ sampling possible. With reference to different data sources, we can identify areas where we are most likely to find specific types of respondents and define such areas using buffers, which in turn can be saved as layers that will be available to support analysis at a later stage.”
In addition, Map Marker enables TNS Research Surveys to geocode certain data within the sampling frame by plotting the coordinates for each record, making it possible to design a sample and plan fieldwork around it. At the end of the research process, geocoding allows the company to verify where interviews have been done. When overlaid with Google Earth, it gives users an overview of what is happening on the ground and places them in an excellent position to monitor fieldwork.
For presentations, thematic mapping adds a different dimension to the data. “Being able to see data visually sparks different approaches to analysis,” states Lombaard. “What‟s more, within a single Location Intelligence environment it is possible to link data to relevant images, audio files or video recordings. It then truly becomes a powerful platform through which to integrate - and interrogate - research findings.”
International marketing research company, The Nielsen Company utilises MapInfo for purposes such as feasibility studies, particularly in the retail industry to analyse proposed sites for specified land uses. The Location Intelligence tool draws on National Address Data (NAD) and Living Standard Measure (LSM) data to determine the feasibility of proposed sites as well as to perform micro analyses within a specified buffer to determine the competitors of a particular retailer.
According to Riona Naidu, GIS Manager at The Nielsen Company, Location Intelligence is a key element in the research projects carried out by the company, particularly in terms of verifying and visualising data.
“When conducting consumer research, we use MapInfo to produce location maps and fairly distribute client regions to the researchers for field work as well as allocate them to our measurement department‟s databases for reporting purposes. MapInfo‟s spatial analysis ability enables us to localise specific regions of interest according to clients‟ needs. The Nielsen Company‟s automated map report templates are all created with this tool and through ProViewer, non-registered users of MapInfo can also view interactive maps and data tables relevant to them.
“In addition, MapInfo is used to geocode and validate the data in The Nielsen Company‟s household register that was created 40 years ago,” she adds.
In a recent media project, The Nielsen Company used MapInfo in measuring the exposure on outdoor advertising sites such as billboards, especially in validating site data and the analysis of results.
“Using Npods (Nielsen Personal Outdoor Devices) researchers completed a respondent travel database, identified the different LSM patterns with drive-time analysis and were able to establish the best outdoor advertising spots for different products,” says Naidu.
“MapInfo was applied in all stages of the research project – to verify site characteristics and map sites prior to kick-off, to process the datasets and visualise key points such as geocodes, primary roads and the facing direction of the billboards, as well as investigating zero passage sites, invalid road designations as well as street segments with a high range of passage subsequently. After this successful test run in South Africa, a similar project is now being deployed in the USA.”
“Answering the „where‟ question - where are my most profitable customers, where are my competitors located, where are my retail locations performing best – in addition to the traditional „whom‟, „what‟ and „when‟, is a fundamental need,” stresses Ellis. “Currently being applied with great success by various market research institutions, we at ST Group believe that Location Intelligence is not a „nice-to-have‟ anymore, but is fast becoming a „must have‟ in this industry.”
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