• The latest demographic, competitor stores, market research and ‘points of interest’ datasets were used to quantify the current and future ‘instore’ and ‘online’ market sizes across the 16 focus cities. This was used to provide city rankings.
• RetailVision Destinations – Retail Centres and Retail Trade Zones (TZs) – were comprehensively mapped to provide a detailed depiction of China’s retail landscape.
• Benchmark brands were assigned an attractiveness score, based on the brand’s popularity in the market and retail presence using 3^rd party survey data. These scores were aggregated for each mall, creating a ranking of the attractiveness for the Microsoft brand and its consumer.
• Catchment analysis was conducted to help identify footfall generators and amenities within proximity of Centres & TZs.
• GMAP’s bespoke Spatial Interaction Model was used to estimate the flow of consumer spend within each City to the defined Centres & TZs. From this, the service catchment spend and market coverage of each Centre & TZ was reported and ranked.
• Future market potential was forecasted, encompassing future retail and infrastructure developments. This allowed Microsoft to assess the future catchment spend of Centres & TZs in their future investment strategy. 
• 'Primary', 'secondary' and 'future targets' were identified using a rule-based approach.
• The approach was then applied to each TZ and its Centres to identify 'primary', 'secondary' and 'future targets' as Microsoft’s recommended roadmap for growth.

The Conclusion

GMAP’s roadmap recommendations provided Microsoft with a clear scientific depiction of which malls met the criteria for new store investments. This helped the local and regional teams in supporting their investment decisions.

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