QUESTION: What demographic and geographic information should Eddie Bauer collect
ID: 450931 • Letter: Q
Question
QUESTION: What demographic and geographic information should Eddie Bauer collect to select store locations?
CASE 5-3
Eddie Bauer: Strategize with Secondary Marketing Data
Eddie Bauer, Inc., is a leading international retail brand, offering casual lifestyle products for adults through its retailing concepts: Eddie Bauer and Eddie Bauer Home. Eddie Bauer products are for men and women who seek versatile, classically styled, high- quality merchandise designed to meet a wide range of their apparel and home-furnishing needs. Since
1920, the company has evolved from a single store in Seattle to a multichannel, international company with more than 590 stores worldwide. In addition, Eddie Bauer has 110 million catalogs in circulation and an online website (www.eddiebauer.com). The company operates stores in the United States and Canada, and has joint venture partnerships in Germany and Japan.
Eddie Bauer has long considered the location of stores as the key element for maximizing sales. How- ever, the problem has been how to choose these prime locations. Until recently, the company relied on basic census information, such as income and number ofhouseholds, when choosing locations for new stores. But recent demographic changes in the United States and Canada have made this task more complex.
One of the main objectives of Eddie Bauer’s mar- keting team was to answer the following questions:
Who are our best prospects? What are their demo- graphics: age, income, occupation, education, house- hold size, and more?
What are they like? How would target customers like to spend their leisure time, what kinds of products do they purchase, what types of vehicles are they likely to drive, and what is their interest in and use of the latest technologies.
Where can I find them? What are the right places to look—rural, urban, inner-city, small-town, or subur- ban communities? The next step is to figure out a way to get down to the blocks they live on.
HowcanIreachthem?Howcancustomersbeattracted into Eddie Bauer stores and what are their media habits: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, or the Internet?
So Eddie Bauer purchased Clarita’s online geocod- ing and GIS mapping software, along with databases to provide precise knowledge for identifying ideal loca- tion. The first step was to identify potential areas of high retail expenditures. Information (household growth rate, number of housing units) about these loca- tions along with consumer information (age, income level, household size, and education level) were col- lected using Clarita’s demographics. Thus, for each proposed store location, Eddie Bauer’s marketing team gathered detailed consumer information on the market and potential new locations relative to existing stores and competitors.
Moreover, Eddie Bauer’s marketing team started to use Clarita’s Potential Rating Index Zip Markets (PRIZM) geocoding system to evaluate existing sites and current customers. For example, they not only profiled the shoppers at its five best-performing retail outlets but also studied the branches that were not doing very well. The profile of the shoppers would help the marketing team identify the shared character- istics of customers who frequent Eddie Bauer Stores. This knowledge would be very helpful not only in deciding on new site locations, interior designs, and merchandising mix but also in developing the store concept. This detailed consumer information prepares Eddie Bauer to compete more efficiently in the ever- changing retail industry.
What demographic and geographic information should Eddie Bauer collect to select store locations?
Explanation / Answer
What demographic and geographic information should Eddie Bauer collect to select store locations?
Answer –
The demographic and geographic information that Eddie Bauer would gather should effectively allow them to create target sections that are profitable to board, large or at least adequate in size, and which can be effectively touched and engaged with. Based on this, the important demographic information that must be collected is the age profiles, revenue profiles and occupation. Using this demographic information, Eddie Bauer would be talented to come up with key visions on what are the major client segments, come up with a target client segment that they could then stab to address as share of their marketing efforts. In terms of geographic information, this would be actual key to have in mixture with the demographic information as this would assistance Eddie Bauer in excising on anywhere they should find their stores and also on which areas or neighbourhoods should they focus on as share of their marketing labours. The geographic information that should be calm includes home address or site, work address of location, seats that are frequented on a regular basis, their connected browsing habits and periods and where they shop for groups such as clothes and home fittings. These would provide very important insights when plotted to the demographics information calm, that could then be used for pending up with store location decisions and beleaguered marketing strategy.
The demographics which the firm wants to collect will be the monetary stability of the customers which have remained living near the stores or the potential sites. They need to have statistics on their employment and the kind of employment. The annual salary figures lengthways with the time of extras will help the firm to grow its offering strategies. The tastes and the favourites can be examined from the cultural charting of the places which will help the firm to understand the type of crops which will attract the customer’s the greatest. The recent purchase will help the store to comprehend the type of products and the value range which has been activated the buys. This information will help to comprehend the various aspect of the consumer procurement presentation. The geographic information required will be the location of the various public seats which are near the sites, they can be the colleges and also the shopping plazas. The locational advantage can be resulting by setting up the store in a posh area which will help in the sales of the global brands. The location of nearby offices will too help in the sales. The network of infrastructures need to be unspoken as more traffic will also nasty the lack of parking seats and thus the loss of customers who prefer global brands. The discernibility of the store wants to be taken into thought.