GMAP Reflect on 30 Years of Change

Why Don't Dealership Locations Work The Way They Used To?

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:49:59 GMT

Why Don't Dealership Locations Work The Way They Used To?

7th April 2026

Key Insights

Dealership locations are moving from showroom visibility to service accessibility and operational capacity
Customers are travelling further to buy vehicles, but expect servicing and after-sales to remain local and convenient
New sales models and EV brands are increasing complexity and overlap within dealer networks
Data from registrations, travel habits and servicing is driving more frequent review of dealership networks

Most dealership networks weren’t planned in one go…

…they grew. A new site here, a consolidation there - decisions made for good reasons at the time, that over the years hardened into a network that feels fixed.

But the way customers use dealerships has changed. People now research online, book, buy and follow up across digital and physical channels without thinking about it, and expect servicing and support to work around their lives, not the other way round. Electric vehicles have accelerated that change - but they’re only part of the story.

What’s changing is the role of dealer location. It’s no longer enough to be on a busy main road - what counts today is access, service capacity, and how easily a visit fits in a customer's daily routine. Data from registrations, service catchments and travel patterns shows that customer behaviour has evolved - and that long-held assumptions about location need regular testing.

Dealer networks built up over decades are often complex, but the right insight can reveal opportunities to adapt and future-proof locations.

This article will explore what these automotive market trends mean for dealership locations, how wider automotive market trends are reshaping customer behaviour, and how networks can plan, manage and optimise their sites in today’s changing automotive market.

What's changing in the automotive sector?

The automotive market is moving faster than many dealer networks were built for. Customers aren’t relying on showrooms as their starting point : they explore cars online or browse flexible subscription options - and even when people visit a dealership, they often arrive already knowing what they want.

Some of the key changes shaping dealer networks include:

Leasing is growing , especially for fleets and company cars
Customers are relying less on dealerships for information
Servicing and after-sales are becoming more profitable
New EV brands are using agency, online, or subscription models
Salary sacrifice schemes are affecting where vehicles are bought, used, and serviced

Servicing and after-sales have become a major part of the dealership business. Vehicles still need maintenance and repair work, and for many dealerships servicing can now be more profitable than new car sales.

That has real implications for location strategy: dealerships need to be easy for customers to reach and practical for moving vehicles and parts - not just visible on a busy thoroughfare.

The result is a more fragmented landscape, where the assumptions that worked for legacy brands don't always apply.

Current market trends in the automotive industry are testing dealership networks

Data from registrations, travel habits, and servicing shows one thing clearly: customers are moving differently, and dealer networks are having to rethink where and how they operate. The growing use of data in the automotive industry is helping make these changes more visible, so let’s take a closer look…

Public registration trends

The UK car market is on the move. In 2025, new vehicle registrations climbed back to just over two million , marking a third year of recovery (but still below pre‑COVID levels). Analysis of DVLA vehicle registration data helps show how these patterns vary by location and vehicle type.

What’s really changing is the mix of vehicles: petrol cars now make up less than half of all registrations, while electric and plug-in hybrid models are taking a growing slice of the market. EV adoption is happening unevenly across the country, and it’s creating local demand patterns that are putting pressure on dealer networks to reassess where capacity is needed.

Customer travel behaviour

Recent research from the RAC Dealer Network shows that who you buy from now matters as much as where you buy. 62% of used car buyers say the trustworthiness of the retailer is their top priority, ahead of make or model, while 45% still highlight location as a key factor.

Even in an online-first world, proximity counts - buyers want dealers to be easy to reach, and having to travel too far remains a barrier. For dealerships, that means reputation, convenience, and accessibility play a huge role in whether an enquiry becomes a sale.

Different patterns for purchase and service

Research on car ownership and EV use shows that where people buy a car isn’t always where they want it serviced. One-off purchases might take customers across regions, but routine maintenance, warranty work, and updates need to fit around everyday travel - home, work, and leisure. That makes service catchments tighter and more local than sales, and dealerships need to plan accordingly.

Overlapping dealership catchments

Analysis of anonymised card-spend data abroad highlights that local markets rarely form neat circles. Postcodes that generate the bulk of a site’s transactions create irregular, overlapping areas. For dealer networks, this means real-world catchments interlock in complex ways, with competition and overlap that simple assumptions about distance or boundaries can’t capture.

This is why location planning is increasingly data-driven, helping networks optimise coverage, reduce inefficiencies, and make smarter decisions about where to open, expand, or adjust sites.

Dealership location strategy is moving on from visibility to viability

By this point, we’ve shown that networks are being rethought with strategy in mind. But how does that actually play out?

Well, most changes are small, deliberate shifts in how locations are used and what they’re expected to do. Less focus on shiny new flagships and how a site looks from the road, more focus on how it performs day to day.

Can it cope with servicing demand? Is it easy for customers to reach? Does it support the operational realities behind the scenes?

In practice, this is changing the type of sites that make sense:

Customer convenience: Locations that are easy to get to, park at, and use fit better into everyday routines than highly visible but congested high-street spots. This is especially true for servicing, where convenient drop-off and collection potentially matter more to some customers than a swanky showroom.
Service capacity: Workshops that can handle volume, with sufficient ramps, space, and skilled technicians, carry the commercial weight. In many networks, these sites matter more to long-term performance than showroom size or prominence.
Logistics: Vehicles move between sites, suppliers, and workshops before reaching customers. Locations with good road access and operational space reduce friction and cost.

The showroom may front the brand, but back-of-house realities are shaping location choices just as much.

The result is a different approach to planning. Dealer networks are being reviewed more often, assumptions are being tested more regularly, and location strategy is becoming an ongoing process rather than a one-off decision. The goal isn’t perfection - it’s keeping pace with a market that doesn’t stand still.

How do you manage dealership locations across multiple brands?

Once you start running multiple franchises, things get more complex fast. Each brand has its own ideas of what a dealership should do - a premium brand may insist on a standalone showroom in a prime spot, while a volume brand is happy sharing space or keeping it practical.

Then you add in the new wave of Chinese EV brands, and the picture becomes even more complicated. As we explored in our 2023 analysis article , some expand quickly through traditional dealer networks, others work with existing groups, and a few bypass the classic dealership model entirely. Suddenly, the rules aren’t the same for every brand - some need space for stock, others prioritise handovers, service, and customer experience.

For multi-franchise networks, that creates a tricky balancing act. Shared facilities can save costs and make networks more efficient, but only if each brand still feels at home. The same site may need to do different jobs for different franchises (traditional, agency, or direct-to-consumer), all with different expectations.

That’s where GMAP’s location data and analysis services come in. By looking at registrations, servicing patterns, and real travel behaviour , we help dealer groups see where networks overlap, where gaps exist, and whether sites can support multiple brands.

With Chinese EVs growing from 2% to nearly 18% of UK registrations in just four years, relying on assumptions alone won’t cut it anymore - the automotive industry now needs data-led insight to make decisions they can trust.

What these automotive market trends mean for dealership networks going forward

The automotive sector isn’t idling - customers are browsing, comparing, and booking from the comfort of their own devices, and they expect drop-offs, servicing, and support to fit around their day-to-day lives. Dealerships can’t just rely on being in the right high street anymore - it’s about being in the right place, for the right service, at the right time.

For some networks, that means giving new life to existing sites: turning a showroom into a busy service hub, or consolidating operations so fewer locations do more. For others, it’s finding new spots where real demand is growing, not where legacy assumptions say it should be. Every decision starts with insight - knowing how customers move, how they use your services, and what each site actually delivers.

Stop guessing and start measuring

This is exactly where GMAP can help. Our location planning tools and geospatial intelligence software , paired with our expert consultancy advice , turn complex location data into clear insight: which sites are pulling their weight, where coverage is thin, and how to manage multiple brands efficiently.

The networks that thrive aren’t the ones that built big showrooms decades ago - they’re the ones asking, “Is this site still working?” and acting on what the numbers show.

Speak to GMAP today and see how our data, tools, and expertise on automotive market trends can help your network stay ahead, optimise coverage, and future-proof locations.

Retail Location Strategy And How to Build One

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:38:38 GMT

Why Retail Location Strategy Matters and How You Can Develop One

2nd April 2026

Key Insights

Location decisions matter more than ever. Choosing where to open a store influences costs, customer access, operations and long-term profitability.
Good site selection is based on evidence. You need to understand who your customers are, how they move, who your competitors are and whether a location truly fits your brand.
Every store should strengthen the wider network. A new site shouldn’t steal trade from existing stores or sit in the wrong place. It should fill gaps, support coverage and improve overall performance.
Data helps you make smarter, lower-risk decisions. By using location insight and scenario modelling, retailers can test options before signing leases and make choices that support sustainable growth.

For years, retail growth in the UK followed a fairly predictable pattern…

…A strong high street, a busy shopping centre, a new retail park on the ring road - job done. If the footfall was there, the logic followed.

That pattern doesn’t quite work anymore.

Two towns a short drive apart can tell completely different stories. One thrives on convenience shopping, leisure and steady local spend. The other is quieter, with patchy footfall and rising vacancies. Meanwhile, customers drift between online and in-store - browsing on their phone, collecting locally, returning somewhere else entirely.

These days stores juggle multiple roles: they’re collection points, return hubs, brand showcases and micro-distribution centres, all wrapped into one. Costs for rent, energy and staffing remain significant, so a site needs to do more than simply open its doors and wait for passing trade - it has to work as part of a wider network. That makes every location decision more consequential.

And that’s why retail location strategy matters more in today’s market than it did even a decade ago. Retail location strategy can’t be reactive - it needs to be deliberate, data-led and built around how the market really works today.

In this article, we explore the importance of retail location strategy - and how you can develop one that supports growth, resilience and smarter decision-making across your network.

What is retail location data strategy (and why does it even matter?)

Retail location strategy is the framework that decides where your brand shows up, why it’s there, and how each site fits into the bigger network. Every store should support your brand, operate efficiently, and meet customers where they are.

A decade ago, store location in retail management was primarily a property exercise: find the site, agree the rent, fit it out. Today, it touches every part of the business. Stock, staffing, delivery, and service all hinge on where a store sits - and how it connects with the rest of the network.

That’s where data comes in. Understanding who your customers are, where they travel from, which competitors are nearby, and what operational limits each site has is valuable insight. A tactical decision might get you a shop that looks good; a strategic one makes sure every location earns its keep and strengthens the network over the long term.

Famous and proven examples of retail location strategy

Great location decisions are the result of strategy, insight, and a clear understanding of how each site fits into a wider network. In practice, some of the best examples come from brands that thought carefully about where, and why, they opened their first stores.

Scale, replication and franchising

As we explored in our analysis of how international retailers have entered and grown in the UK market , location choices tell a story about strategy. Some brands stick to a London‑centric approach, but others choose very different paths - and their outcomes show what thoughtful location planning looks like in practice

Take Nespresso. Rather than following the usual “London‑first” approach, its first UK boutique opened in The Trafford Centre in Manchester before expanding into the capital. That early decision helped it build a national presence more evenly, showing that starting outside the obvious centre can pay off.

McDonald’s offers another well‑known example. Its growth wasn’t rooted in property ownership so much as site quality and repeatability . By prioritising places that fitted its operational model and could be replicated consistently, it built one of the most recognisable franchise networks in the world - a template many location planners still follow today. That focus on strategic site selection , rather than reactive property choices, underpins the consistency and success of its franchise network.

The lesson for today’s retailers is clear: success scales best when you take a systematic, data-informed approach. Franchise networks need clarity on where to open, why a site works, and how to avoid eating into neighbouring sites' sales.

That’s where GMAP’s location analysis , geospatial software and consultancy services come in, turning complex data on customers, competitors and travel patterns into actionable insight for every new site.

Site selection in retail management sets the tone for success: choose well, and each store supports the network; choose poorly, and costs, operations, and brand perception all take a hit.

What are the main factors affecting site selection?

Every shop has to earn its place: footfall, operations, and network fit all matter. Here, we break down the key factors to consider in site selection that turn a location into a strategic asset.

Footfall volume vs footfall quality

When you consider how much our lives have changed in recent years, from rarely relying on devices to using them every day, it’s not surprising that retail is evolving too. Location planning now caters to online shoppers who still want, and are actively looking for, a great in-person experience. This highlights the growing importance of location in retail business today.

A shopper who enjoys both requires:

A combination of online and offline shopping: Retail parks and click-and-collect hubs are thriving by offering the convenience shoppers demand.

Location intelligence: Location planning now uses spatial interaction models to simulate spend at specific stores, helping brands understand how physical sites support digital sales in the same catchment.

High-profile locations vs lower-cost alternatives

Being on a flagship street like Oxford Street brings prestige and visibility, but it comes with a price tag that needs to be earned back through performance. For some brands, it’s worth every penny; for others, regional hubs, secondary high streets, or smaller towns can deliver better returns with less financial risk.

Thing is, it’s not just about cost. High-profile sites often tie you into long leases and limit flexibility, which can be risky if the market shifts. Cheaper locations give room to test, adapt, or scale without locking in huge overheads. What works for a flagship doesn’t always translate across a wider network, which is why weighing these factors, and backing decisions with data, is crucial in site selection.

Day-to-day operations and logistics

A postcode is only the starting point; real success depends on what goes on behind the scenes. Behind every smooth customer visit is a chain of practical realities: deliveries need space to pull in, stock needs to flow efficiently from storage to the shop floor, and staff need a location they can reach reliably.

Then there’s the size question - not every format fits every building. A small local store and a full-range outlet have very different requirements, and trying to fit one into the wrong space slows operations and limits potential.

And of course there’s the network itself: too many stores in the same neighbourhood and they start competing with each other; too few and you’re leaving customers, and revenue, on the table. These operational and logistical factors might not be as obvious as footfall or demographics, but they’re often the difference between a profitable location and one that struggles.

Could your nearby competitors actually be a good opportunity?

Picture a high street or retail park. You’ve got other stores around - some selling the same type of product, some complementing yours. What does their presence actually tell you?

Sometimes, being near competitors makes it harder to stand out - like two dealerships side by side, both selling the same cars, fighting for the same customers. Other times, being close works in your favour: a cluster of dealerships can turn an area into a destination, attracting more shoppers because of choice and convenience - a dynamic called the Halo Effect. You can read more about how it shapes performance here .

The trick is knowing which is which. What does the cluster say about local demand? How are customers moving between stores? Does it fit your brand’s positioning? That’s where data steps in. Understanding footfall flows, customer behaviour, and market maturity gives you a clear picture.

GMAP’s location intelligence tools help turn this insight into action. Tools like MVPLUS let you map competitors, understand catchments and visualise customer travel patterns, while RetailVision and other analytics help you assess where clusters indicate opportunity or saturation.

Using insight rather than assumption makes competitor presence something to interpret, not just react to, helping you shape a stronger, data‑informed site strategy.

Rethinking retail locations for today’s market

Every brand needs options. Not every location calls for a full-size store, and not every market justifies a long lease. This section looks at the new models reshaping retail strategy: ways to test, expand, and reach customers while keeping risk and cost under control.

Choosing the right location is one thing, but the real challenge is using that insight to create a strategy that drives results.

How to develop a retail location strategy that works

We’ve walked the streets, measured the footfall, and analysed how competitors shape the retail landscape. But one question remains:

How can you make sure your next site is the right one for your team, your customers, and your network?

Every site is no longer just a shop, it’s a node in a network that has to work harder than ever - commercially, operationally and strategically.

The questions retail leaders must answer haven’t changed…

Where should we open next?
Which towns or neighbourhoods hold untapped potential?
How does this site strengthen or weaken the wider network?
Are we expanding, optimising or consolidating?
Where are we at risk of cannibalisation?

The difference today is how you answer them - and the insights you use to do it.

Replacing instinct with insight

A good store location retail management strategy starts with the bigger picture. Are you expanding into new towns, optimising existing sites, or consolidating where demand is thin? Where are your gaps, and where are sites at risk of overlapping with one another or with competitors? Using our location intelligence tools, you can map these patterns, benchmark your sites, and spot opportunities you might otherwise miss.

Testing decisions before committing capital

Scenario planning answers the tricky questions:

What if you open here instead of there?
How will one site influence another?
What happens if demographics shift or footfall declines?

Spatial interaction modelling allows you to test these scenarios, showing how each decision plays out across your network as a whole.

Turning location into competitive advantage

A strong location data strategy means thinking beyond the next lease. It’s about:

Protecting margin
Strengthening coverage
Targeting locations that strengthen the entire network

Customer habits, costs, and competition are always changing, so GMAP’s tools ensure every site contributes, every decision counts, and every insight drives growth - not guesswork.

Every retail location decision sends ripples through your network - some obvious, some subtle. A single site can pull customers from nearby stores, leave gaps elsewhere, or underdeliver because the people walking past aren’t your target audience.

That’s why we map it all out. GMAP looks at where your customers live, how they move, which competitors are nearby, and how each site fits into the wider network. We don’t just tell you if a location “looks good” - we show you what it does for the business as a whole.

After all, the importance of location data strategy has never been greater - and neither has the cost of getting it wrong.

Ready to put insight at the heart of your location strategy? Talk to GMAP’s retail specialists today and see how data-led decisions can transform your network.

Automotive Market Trends Affecting Dealer Networks | GMAP

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:00:03 GMT

Will Automotive Market Trends In 2026 Affect Dealership Networks & Dealership Locations?

27th January 2026

Key Insights

Physical dealership buildings have declined from 4,500 to 4,100 over the past seven years as manufacturers seek greater operational efficiency.
The number of automotive brands has surged by over 35% since 2019, with Chinese entrants like BYD aggressively doubling their dealership networks.
VR technology is enabling dealerships to reduce physical showroom size, cutting heating and rental costs while maintaining customer experience.
New automotive market trends mean dealership locations must balance competing demands: customer accessibility versus placement for vehicle deliveries and parts distribution.

Over the past 10 years, there have been, let’s say, a few changes to the automotive industry…

…Technology advancements across the board, including an increase in electric vehicles, AI improvements and even online shopping advancements, are changing the way manufacturers display products and how customers purchase vehicles.

As a result, physical dealership sites are thinking about strategic reduction, relocation and repurposing to evolve with this new market.

While the industry is also experiencing major business mergers (such as US retailers acquiring UK dealerships and overseas investment), this article focuses specifically on property portfolio consolidation and dealership location strategy.

The key automotive trends affecting dealer networks in 2026

The physical footprint of the automotive sector is changing. More people now buy cars partly or fully online, leasing and subscription models are reshaping how customers access vehicles, dealerships need new technology for electric vehicles, and the number of brands continues to grow - all of which make it harder to showcase the range people expect in person. These factors combined are forcing dealerships to change the way they work to make more sense to the end buyer, thus increasing profitability.

Let’s take a look at a few of these trends in more detail…

Electric vehicles and sustainability

Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) continue to gain market share, propelled by stringent regulations, manufacturers' net-zero commitments and a rapid expansion in model choice across price points and segments. This change is fundamentally altering the economics and spatial requirements of dealership operations.

Physical dealership building decline

Over the past seven years, the number of physical dealership buildings (or "rooftops") has declined from 4,500 to 4,100 as manufacturers seek greater control over the front-end sales pipeline. This consolidation reflects a strategic pivot towards more efficient, multi-brand facilities and alternative retail formats.

New brands emerging

Traditional brand loyalty is eroding as the number of available brands has surged by over 35% since 2019. New Chinese entrants , most notably BYD, have been particularly aggressive, doubling their dealership networks and filling spaces vacated by legacy brands rationalising their physical presence.

Despite these new trends causing challenges, the physical presence of vehicles is still really important. Most buyers now complete their research online and often visit a dealership with a model already in mind. The role of the showroom has therefore changed from discovery to confirmation, helping reassure the buyer’s decision, reinforce brand confidence, and support the final transaction.

Technology like VR can now be used in dealerships too to showcase different vehicles, features, and customisation options, allowing customers to view and experience cars that aren’t currently on the forecourt - creating a halfway point between viewing online and seeing in person.

This offers a new opportunity for dealerships to reduce retail store size, making savings on increasingly expensive heating and rental costs. Due to this, location strategy remains paramount, making it a question of “where is best to consolidate?”

Factoring location planning into strategy

As always, nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems. When deciding on location, the first logical step is to look at sales figures. While this is one deciding factor, there are many other important aspects to consider.

At GMAP Analytics, we take on this responsibility - planning and providing location intelligence for the retail , leisure , and automotive sectors. We have helped some of the world’s most recognised automotive brands and energy companies to make future-proof investment decisions.

What really matters when consolidating dealership locations…

Dealer areas of representation

Any consolidation decision starts with an understanding of the level of coverage delivered through the network. Dealer territories, usually assigned by postcode, offer a logical baseline - but logic on a map doesn’t always match reality on the ground. The focus should be on confirming that retained locations still reflect real-world customer catchments, preventing gaps in coverage and minimising unnecessary travel.

Retail access versus operational reality

Location decisions often involve trade-offs. City-centre sites may be easier for customers to reach, but can introduce challenges around logistics, space and cost. Out-of-town locations often work better operationally, with stronger transport links and more room for EV infrastructure, but may generate less walk-in traffic. The right balance depends on how each site is expected to operate in the future.

When a dealership is worth more as something else

Not every site should remain a dealership. In some cases, the underlying land or property has greater value when repurposed, whether for logistics, EV charging, or alternative retail use. Recognising when to exit a site can free up capital to invest where automotive retail makes more sense.

Bringing multiple brands under one roof

Housing several franchises in a single location can reduce property costs and simplify operations, from shared workshops to back-office functions. The challenge is ensuring those locations still serve multiple territories effectively without weakening coverage or convenience for customers and minimising intra-franchise competition between the brands sharing the site.

Get this right, and consolidation becomes great for both cost reduction and growth.

Why data-led location planning is critical

Because dealership consolidation can cost millions and carries long-term operational consequences, getting the decision right is critical. High-level data analysis provides the evidence needed to make those decisions with confidence.

The foundation of sound location planning is understanding demand within a territory. This can be measured through multiple lenses, including the Vehicle Parc , which provides a complete census of vehicles currently owned and driven in a given area, alongside new car registration data and modelled demand based on target customer profiles.

Effective analysis requires granular detail. Vehicle Parc data includes over 30 specific data fields per vehicle record, including make, model, vehicle age, fuel type, engine size and partial postcode. This granularity allows precise mapping of customer clusters and identification of underserved areas or saturated markets.

Performance benchmarking tools, such as used car report dashboards, compare a dealer's internal sales data against the wider territory market. These digital tools highlight where specific sites are underperforming relative to the available opportunity, which is critical when deciding which locations to release.

Finally, predictive data tracking used car disposals (the rate at which people replace their vehicles) signals when a local population is primed for new purchases. Combined with demographic trends , competitor analysis , and brand loyalty modelling (including whether customers are likely to remain in-brand or switch to alternatives), this ensures consolidation strategies are optimised for both today’s and tomorrow’s market.

Using GMAP Analytics for locating your next dealership

Ultimately, location planning comes with high stakes and is a complex task that requires more than just a map; it requires time, dedication and location intelligence software.

At GMAP Analytics , we have the ability to create an Ideal Network Plan. This is a project that uses data to design the most efficient arrangement of dealership locations across a country.

As a reseller of the DVLA anonymised automotive industry data set, we provide world-leading data that isn’t available to the general public. We can also provide tools such as MVPLUS , which turns complex spreadsheets into easy-to-read visual maps - showcasing your entire network's strengths and weaknesses.

Location matters. Take control of your decisions with empirical data. Contact GMAP Analytics now, and let us turn insight into action.

What 2026 Means For Retail Location Planning | GMAP

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 14:03:37 GMT

What 2026 Means For Retail Location Planning

12th January 2026

Key Insights

Physical stores have moved from transaction points to “immersive brand experience hubs” where it’s all about the experience
By 2026, agentic commerce will prioritise retailers with stock within a 15-minute radius of consumers, making proximity more critical than traditional footfall metrics
Location intelligence is now essential for identifying where target customers live, work, and shop, allowing retailers to tailor store experiences and optimise investment decisions
Retail success in 2026 will depend on how well brands connect their digital and physical environments, using real-world data to continuously plan, activate, and measure performance

The last 10 years have changed drastically in retail. In the 2010’s, we witnessed a shift from shopping in person to shopping online (with online sales now accounting for over 27% of total retail sales), and now, we’re seeing how retail is adapting with AI.

For retail location planners like us at GMAP Analytics, location planning is no longer simply about where a store is placed, but more so about how its physical point interacts with its online partner.

We’re predicting that 2026 will see brands using location intelligence to turn physical spaces into a ‘phygital experience’, where consumers can discover and connect with the brand. And we believe that retail location and storefront positioning are more important than ever before...

Factors Affect Retail Store Location

As consumers can always order online, the role of the store has been less about being a transaction point and more about being an immersive experience. It’s now a connection point, a place for the brand to tell its story, a place for customers to feel emotionally invested.

Naturally, this creates a trade-off between opening high-experience sites and closing underperforming locations. Let’s take a look at some of the key factors affecting retail store location strategy today.

Data-Driven Location Decisions

Retailers are using data analysis tools to group similar shoppers together and choose store locations that match specific interests, such as health and sustainability. By studying what people buy, who lives in the area, and how they behave, brands can pinpoint areas where their ideal customer lives.

This means retailers can design store experiences, from the products they stock to the services they offer, that appeal to local shoppers. It’s like when we partnered with Holmes Place to develop their location strategy for the launch of their Evo gyms across Europe. Our analysis identified optimal locations based on catchment characteristics, competitor proximity, and local demographic profiles - and ensured each site was positioned where target customers actually lived, worked, and travelled.

Optimising Store Portfolios

To keep costs under control, brands can use tools like our very own RetailVision to plan their store portfolio, deciding which locations to expand and which to close based on growth potential and how competitors are performing. These platforms combine foot traffic data, local population characteristics, and sales figures (three of the most important factors in retail store location planning) to create a complete picture of each store's prospects.

Retailers can test different scenarios to understand what would happen if they closed struggling stores or moved to better locations. This evidence-based approach helps brands avoid the expensive mistake of keeping unprofitable shops open while spotting untapped markets for growth.

Artificial Intelligence and Agentic Commerce

Agentic commerce will by far be the fastest change in 2026 for retailers. This is where AI assistants will shop on behalf of consumers, evaluating products on learned preferences, budget constraints and real-time availability.

This changes the location priority from a visibility exercise to a supply chain and optimisation challenge - it becomes a question of “how can I keep what the AI recommends stocked?”.

How does agentic commerce work?

AI agents will use a consumer's location and browsing history to suggest and even purchase products automatically. For a retailer to be "suggested" by an AI agent, having stock in a location near the consumer becomes a competitive advantage. These systems prioritise convenience and speed, meaning a store with available inventory within a 15-minute radius will rank higher than a competitor requiring next-day delivery.

Rather than focusing purely on customer footfall or demographics, being geographically positioned within the AI's ‘recommendation radius’ is now a huge factor affecting retail location decisions.

Our prediction is that by 2026, retail search will feel like asking a knowledgeable assistant for advice: these systems will search local stock levels and reviews to give a single recommendation. Unlike traditional search engines that present multiple options, agentic AI will curate a shortlist based on price, reviews, sustainability credentials, and delivery timeframes.

Retailers must optimise their product data feeds, inventory transparency, and real-time stock to ensure AI agents can access and rank their offerings effectively, especially as UK consumers expect roughly 7% of their total online purchases to be made via AI agents by 2030.

And as AI is being used for consumers, retailers are also using AI for location planning. We have more datasets than ever before, so it’s important to analyse them with ample processing power, helping to provide all the information necessary to draw accurate conclusions.

Connecting Digital and Physical Environments

A shopper who enjoys both requires:

A combination of online and offline shopping: Retail parks and click-and-collect hubs are thriving by offering the convenience shoppers demand.

How advertising and the planning cycle play into location data

Location data has now become a more reliable signal of consumer demand, allowing brands to advertise when a customer is near a store. By using location data, marketers can reach ‘high intent’ audiences (like gym goers or travel planners) in the moments they are physically active in the market.

Marketing used to be far more broad, now it’s behaviour-based and as a result, far more targeted - think a fitness brand promoting their range of protein powders to someone just after they leave a gym.

Retailers are now adopting a "Plan, Activate, Measure" cycle that creates a continuous feedback loop between physical and digital strategies. Real-world movement data (capturing footfall patterns, dwell times, and cross-visitation between locations) is fed back into the planning cycle to inform the next round of site selection or media spend.

This iterative approach allows brands to test hypotheses about catchment areas, measure the incremental impact of new store openings on foot traffic, and adjust marketing budgets based on actual consumer behaviour rather than demographic assumptions. The result is a more agile, responsive approach to location strategy.

We've embedded this evidence-based approach into our retail location planning consultancy - combining our competitive retail insights and geodemographic data with catchment analysis and performance modelling.

Whether we're helping sports fashion retailers identify expansion opportunities , analysing store network performance for health and beauty brands , or developing multi-city growth strategies for global retailers , our work centres on turning real-world location data into confident, defensible decisions about where to invest next.

So, how do you turn data into better location choices?

Here at GMAP, our expectation is to see retail rapidly evolve even further over the coming years. Physical storefronts remain absolutely crucial in maintaining brand loyalty and discovery, but decisions for where they’re located are increasingly based on AI and digital demand.

We believe that with all these recent and rapid changes, location planning and data-driven location intelligence are more important than ever before to ensure a brand makes the right investments.

If you would like to learn more about GMAP’s location intelligence and planning consultancy services, or our range of tools and software designed to help supercharge your business, please get in touch today !

Unlocking the Leisure Halo Effect: A New Era in Retail Success

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 13:21:15 GMT

Unlocking the Leisure Halo Effect: A New Era in Retail Success

3rd June 2025

The Retail-Leisure Halo Effect

At GMAP Analytics, we help retailers make smarter location planning decisions by turning complex data into clear insight. With decades of experience in spatial analytics we specialise in understanding how people move, shop, and spend across the UK and beyond.

As shopping habits evolve, we're seeing leisure play an increasingly important role in retail performance. That’s why we’re exploring the Retail-Leisure Halo Effect—to show how leisure and retail uses interact, and why the most successful retail destinations offer more than just shopping—they deliver experiences.

Consumer habits have been shifting for some time, with over 40% of visitors choosing a shopping centre based on the available dining options, and those that do dine having up to a 48% higher retail spend. These trends highlight the growing importance of integrating leisure—such as dining, entertainment, and social spaces—into retail environments. This is the leisure halo effect: a synergy that continues to reshape site selection and retail location planning.

The Power of Footfall Synergy

Leisure activities create spillover footfall for nearby retailers and attract repeat visitors. These shared visitor missions lead to extended dwell time and higher spend. Whether it’s grabbing a coffee before a movie or shopping after a meal, these additional activities contribute to a higher average spend per visit.

By understanding the interaction between leisure and retail at an existing scheme, investors or potential tenants can understand how to tailor their formats and ranging to suit the customer base there.

Trinity Leeds vs Crown Point: A Tale of Two Shopper Missions

In Leeds, both Trinity Shopping Centre and Crown Point Shopping Park cater to distinct shopper profiles. Trinity Leeds is experiential—blending retail, dining, and entertainment to attract browsers, socialisers, and leisure seekers. Crown Point Shopping Park, by contrast, serves a more practical, destination-driven retail audience with a more vehicle-led catchment. As a result, the leisure provision there is tailored more for immediate refreshment. Both locations excel in their respective strengths, offering very different shopper experiences.

Using GMAP Analytics’ LeisureVision points and RetailVision centres, combined with our self-serve mapping software MVPLUS , retailers can clearly see how leisure and retail behaviours overlap across these locations. An example of this is below, where we have overlayed our RetailVision centre polygons for Trinity and Crown Point over our LeisureVision Opportunity Score hexes to demonstrate how Trinity benefits from its strong leisure anchors and high footfall density, while Crown Point captures a purposeful shopper mission that values convenience.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion: Planning for the Experiential Future of Retail

To thrive in today’s evolving retail landscape, businesses must embrace the leisure halo effect—where dining, entertainment, and social experiences drive footfall, dwell time, and spend. GMAP Analytics’ tools—RetailVision, LeisureVision, and MVPLUS—equip retailers with the insights they need to make smarter, data-driven location decisions. By visualising how leisure and retail interact, brands can identify high-potential sites and design experiences that resonate with modern consumer behaviour.

To hear more about how GMAP Analytics can support your retail strategy, contact us at info@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

We provide global Geo-Mobility Footfall from a third-party supplier at Hexagonal Geography. Using Geo-Mobility Data aggregated to Hexagon level, rather than footfall counters, means you can compare destinations not only across an individual city, but across the world.

This can be used in our projects, delivered to clients for their in-house use or in our MVPLUS location intelligence tool to help clients to observe footfall traffic and combine with other datasets to locate in the optimal locations. Figure 5 shows a brief introduction into how Geo-Mobility Data can be used at Hexagon level in MVPLUS to quickly highlight the key areas in a town or city with the highest levels of traffic.

Why GMAP is a Great Place to Kickstart Your Career: Insights from Recent Graduates

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 15:25:03 GMT

Why GMAP is a Great Place to Kickstart Your Career: Insights from Recent Graduates

27th February 2025

Our new Graduates have now been part of the GMAP Team for over 6 Months

Starting a career can be a daunting experience, but having the right environment, support, and training can make all the difference. At GMAP , recent graduates Awais Hafesji and Charlotte Taylor share their journeys and why GMAP has been an ideal place to start their careers as Graduate Consultants. If you're considering applying to GMAP, read on to discover why this company offers a comprehensive, supportive, and innovative environment for ambitious professionals to thrive.

Meet Charlotte and Awais: Recent Graduates Who Are Thriving at GMAP

Awais Hafesji – Graduate Consultant

Awais joined GMAP in July 2024 after graduating from the University of Leeds with a degree in Geography with Quantitative Methods (Industrial). During his time at Leeds, Awais specialized in statistical analysis and modelling, particularly focusing on population health data, and his dissertation examined access to NHS dental care in Local Authorities across England. Prior to GMAP, Awais spent over a year working at NHS England, where he produced and updated analyses and public statistics for policy teams involved with Pharmacy, Optometry, and Dentistry.

Outside of work, Awais is an adventurous person who enjoys physical activities such as group hikes, playing 5-a-side football, and going to the gym. He is also passionate about his professional development, taking part in challenges like the #30DayMapChallenge, which he completed using R code.

Charlotte Taylor – Graduate Consultant

Charlotte joined GMAP in July 2024 after graduating from the University of Leeds with a degree in Geography with Quantitative Methods, specialising in statistical analysis with a particular focus on retail and health geographies. Charlotte also completed a year-long placement working as a Site Research and Insight Analyst for a major sports fashion retailer. During this time, she contributed to the selection of store locations across the UK, Europe, and internationally, gaining valuable experience in site research, consumer behaviour, and the retail industry.

In her spare time, Charlotte stays active by playing padel, going to the gym, and taking long walks. She also enjoys socialising over coffee, always on the lookout for new and hidden cafés to explore.

Comprehensive Training in a Supportive Learning Environment

When Awais and Charlotte first joined GMAP, they were welcomed into a structured, 8-week training program. This program provided them with an in-depth understanding of the business functions, our wide range of clients and the sectors they fall within, and exposure to the different off-the-shelf and bespoke products we provide. This also allowed them to learn technical skills such as using FME, SQL, and Python. The training wasn’t just about mastering software; it was designed to accelerate their development and enable them to contribute to client projects confidently from day one.

Awais reflects, “Although the learning curve for technical skills was steep, the team was incredibly supportive, helping me grow quickly. The hands-on experience I’ve gained has been invaluable, especially when it comes to using these tools for complex tasks.”

Charlotte shares a similar sentiment: “The comprehensive training allowed me to feel confident in my role. I was able to get up to speed with the team’s projects and immediately contribute to developing products and supporting software solutions for clients.”

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Diverse Industry Exposure: Real-World Experience Across Multiple Sectors

At GMAP, no two days are the same. The company’s diverse client base spans across multiple industries, including retail, automotive, and health, giving consultants the chance to gain a wide variety of experience. Both Awais and Charlotte were excited by the opportunity to work across these different sectors, helping them build a well-rounded skill set early in their careers.

Charlotte explains, “I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects for industries as diverse as retail and automotive. This diversity of work has not only made my role exciting but has also given me a broader perspective of the challenges businesses face in different sectors.”

Awais adds, “I’ve always had a passion for population health, so working on projects with a focus on healthcare was a great fit. But what excites me even more is the opportunity to apply my skills to different industries and see how location planning can influence decision-making in a range of sectors.”

Early Responsibility & Impact

One of the standout features of GMAP is the responsibility entrusted to graduate consultants from the very start. Unlike larger firms where roles may be more siloed, GMAP offers early exposure to impactful tasks that contribute directly to client success.

Awais had the chance to take on complex tasks such as creating drivetime matrices and updating reporting dashboards, which were integral to client projects.

Charlotte also highlights the early responsibility she was given: “From day one, I was working on the backend production of our location intelligence software and supporting the development of our product offerings. It’s incredibly fulfilling to see your work make a real difference to clients.”

Close-Knit, Collaborative Team Culture

GMAP fosters a culture of collaboration, inclusivity, and respect. Awais and Charlotte both appreciate the close-knit and supportive team environment, where everyone’s contributions are valued, and diverse perspectives are celebrated.

Awais shares, “I’ve always felt welcomed and supported here. The team at GMAP is incredibly diverse, and I appreciate how everyone respects and values one another’s backgrounds. This kind of environment encourages creativity and innovation.”

Charlotte echoes this sentiment: “The team culture at GMAP is like no other. Everyone is willing to help each other, and there’s a real sense of camaraderie. I’ve had the chance to work alongside colleagues from different departments, all of whom have supported my learning and growth.”

Flexibility & Career Growth: Tailor Your Path to Your Strengths

Both Awais and Charlotte have been able to tailor their career paths at GMAP by exploring different areas of the business. This flexibility allows employees to identify their strengths and areas of interest, ensuring that their careers align with their passions.

Awais, who has already worked on several projects, looks forward to expanding his role: “As I continue to grow at GMAP, I’m keen to explore different parts of the business and find ways to apply my skills in innovative ways to drive client success. GMAP has provided me with the flexibility to shape my career the way I want whilst aligning to company goals and objectives".

Charlotte also appreciates the room for growth: “I’m excited to continue developing my expertise in location intelligence and data-driven decision-making. GMAP offers ample opportunities to explore different aspects of the business and take on projects that align with my personal interests.”

Encouragement to Innovate & Fast Skill Development

At GMAP, creativity is encouraged, and innovation is at the heart of everything we do. The company fosters a culture of continuous improvement, where new ideas and fresh approaches to problem-solving are always welcomed. For Awais and Charlotte, this focus on innovation has accelerated their skill development.

Charlotte says, “I’ve had the opportunity to contribute creative solutions to projects. Whether it’s enhancing our products or improving workflows, GMAP’s culture of innovation allows me to make an impact while constantly learning.”

Awais agrees: “The blend of technical expertise and consultancy work has been crucial to my development. I’m able to innovate and find more efficient ways to manage client projects, which has led to faster learning and skill-building.”

Work-Life Balance: Prioritising Well-Being

Finally, GMAP’s commitment to work-life balance sets it apart from other firms. While maintaining high standards of work, GMAP values employees’ well-being, offering a supportive environment where personal life is respected.

Charlotte notes, “GMAP truly understands the importance of work-life balance. I feel supported in managing my time, which allows me to stay engaged and focused at work while also making time for my personal life.”

Awais agrees: “The company places a high value on well-being, and this creates a positive and productive work environment where I can thrive both professionally and personally.”

Looking Toward the Future

As they continue their journeys at GMAP, both Awais and Charlotte are excited about the future. With opportunities for growth, exposure to new industries, and the chance to make meaningful contributions to client success, GMAP offers everything a graduate needs to kickstart a career in location intelligence and consultancy.

Awais sums it up well: “GMAP has been a fantastic place to start my career. I’ve already gained so much from the team’s support, the hands-on experience, and the opportunity to work on a variety of exciting projects. I’m looking forward to continuing my journey here and making an even bigger impact.”

Charlotte’s outlook is equally optimistic: “GMAP is the perfect place to learn, grow, and make a tangible impact in the industry. If you’re considering a career in location planning, I highly recommend applying.”

Apply Now

Are you ready to launch your career at GMAP and work alo ngside talented individuals in a dynamic, supportive environment? If you’re passionate about consultancy, data, and making a real impact, apply now to become GMAP's next Graduate Consultant at gmap.com/careers by the 9th March!

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Chasing Gold: Exploring the UK's Premier Olympic Sport Facilities

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 15:34:38 GMT

Chasing Gold: Exploring the UK's Premier Olympic Sport Facilities

26th July 2024

Today, o n the 26th of July, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games will officially commence, welcoming almost 11,000 athletes from 196 nations across the world, followed by the Paralympics with over 4,000 competitors. Some forecasts suggest this summer’s Olympics could be one of team GB’s most successful yet, with 66 medals total! Grassroots sports facilities that introduce sports to individuals and maintain healthy participation in them are vital for team GBs continual Olympic success. At GMAP we used our LeisureVision dataset to investigate the distribution of these facilities and makeup in 2024, separating the single sport facilities such as tennis courts from the multipurpose facilities such as sports centres with swimming pools and gyms attached.

At GMAP, we utilized our LeisureVision dataset to investigate the distribution and composition of these facilities in 2024. We categorized the facilities into single-sport venues, such as tennis courts, and multipurpose centres, such as sports complexes that include swimming pools and gyms.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Distribution of our Single and Multi-Sport Facilities

Multisport facilities are less common than single-sport facilities in the UK, with a concentration in regions with the largest settlements, such as London, the central belt of Scotland, and Northwest England. This distribution aligns with the UK's population centres, where multisport facilities cater to a high number of people by offering a variety of sports in areas where space is often limited. These facilities are typically larger and more costly to build and maintain, making them more prevalent in areas with greater income opportunities.

Single-sport facilities, on the other hand, are more numerous and widespread across the UK but also follow population density patterns. Notable concentrations are found in the Scottish central belt, London, and Northwest England. Regions such as Northern Scotland, the Scottish Lowlands, and highland areas in Northern England and Wales have fewer single-sport facilities due to their lower populations. In these areas, smaller, less expensive facilities are more common, resulting in lower total numbers.

The Makeup of the UK's Sports Facilities

Among the top 10 facility categories, tennis is the most prevalent, comprising approximately 25% of all facilities.

Football follows at about 21%, and swimming accounts for around 13%. Equestrian facilities make up approximately 12% of all sports facilities in the UK, though this figure may be inflated due to many being privately owned and less accessible to the public. Gyms and bowls pitches are nearly equal in number, but gyms serve a larger population. Cricket, basketball, golf, and rugby together make up the final 15%, with facilities distributed throughout the country.

Distribution of the UK's most famous sports

Football has the greatest spread across the UK of the single sport facilities, with almost 25,000 locations. Only central Wales, and the Scottish Highlands have limited access to these facilities.

Cricket

Cricket, with nearly 6,000 locations across the UK, is primarily concentrated in the southern regions. Notable exceptions include hotspots in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where the sport is also highly popular.

Conversely, cricket is underrepresented in Wales, Northern Ireland, and areas outside the central belt of Scotland. These regions have fewer cricket facilities, reflecting lower participation and interest compared to other parts of the UK. Factors such as historical, cultural, and climatic differences contribute to this uneven distribution, affecting the accessibility and development of cricket nationwide. Exploring data on these trends over time would be insightful.

Swimming

Team GB has a distinguished history of producing exceptional swimmers, especially in the 21st century. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Team GB won four swimming gold medals, a first in over 100 years. This success is supported by the presence of nearly 15,000 swimming-only facilities across the UK (and many more when combined with gyms). However, compared to cricket, swimming facilities are more concentrated in the South, particularly from west to east, with a notable decrease further north. The highest concentration is in the region extending from central London southwest into Surrey, reflecting areas with high-income households. In contrast, the notable concentrations of cricket in Yorkshire and Northumberland are not mirrored in swimming-only facilities. There is, however, a greater representation of swimming facilities in Northern Ireland and a more even distribution throughout Scotland.

Football

Football is the UK’s most popular sport and the national sport of England, with over 2 million adults playing at least twice a month. The UK’s long history with football—highlighted by the men’s national team being the oldest in international football—reflects its widespread distribution across the country, though it remains concentrated in high-population areas. Football has a greater presence in Northern England, Northern Ireland, and beyond the Scottish central belt compared to other key sports, due to its ease of setup, maintenance, and widespread appeal. Although Team GB rarely competes in Olympic football, England’s men’s and women’s teams have achieved notable success recently. The women’s team won the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 and finished second in the 2023 World Cup, while the men’s team secured second place in the 2020 and 2024 European Championships. The growing number of football facilities across the UK has supported widespread participation and sustained the sport’s popularity.

Rugby

Rugby originated in England in the 19th century and spread from the schools where it was first played to the rest of the UK and across the British Empire. Today, it is one of the most popular sports in the UK, with approximately 4,000 facilities. However, its distribution is more uneven compared to other key sports. Notable hotspots include Northwest London, South Wales, the West Midlands (where the sport began), West Yorkshire, and central Scotland. Conversely, rugby facilities are sparse in central Wales, Southwest Scotland, and central South England. Despite this uneven distribution, all four UK nations have popular and successful national teams that have competed in and occasionally won significant international competitions.

Conclusion

The success of Team GB in the Olympics, particularly in sports like swimming and rugby highlight the importance of accessible and well-distributed sports facilities across the UK. Our datasets, such as LeisureVision provide invaluable insights into the distribution and accessibility of these facilities, supporting the development of sports infrastructure nationwide.

If you are interested in finding out more about GMAP’s location intelligence services through RetailVision , LeisureVision , and geodemographic data , or our expert location planning consultancy services , and location intelligence software and reporting , get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

SUV Market Deep Dive: Trends & Insights with DVLA Data | GMAP

Mon, 20 May 2024 15:11:00 GMT

A Deep Drive into the SUV Market

20th May 2024

As experts in the automotive location planning industry, at GMAP, we thrive on exploring trends and changes in the automotive sector through our use of DVLA Data . Having been resellers of the anonymized DVLA car registrations dataset for the past decade, we have conducted numerous geodemographic analyses within automotive location planning projects and supplementing projects in the retail industry .

This analysis will focus on new SUV vehicles (Sports Utility Vehicles) in the UK, a sector of the automotive industry which has seen significant change and rising popularity in the modern automotive markets. The growing popularity of SUVs is likely a consequence of multiple factors including: increasing car finance options; increasing demand for electric vehicles (which are commonly SUVs); and their perceived comfort and luxury.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

The SUV Market Summarised

Since Q4 2018, more than 2.6 million new SUVs have been purchased in the UK, with Nissan, Kia, Audi, Land Rover, and Hyundai emerging as the top five most purchased brands for this category of car. Among these, the Nissan Qashqai, a compact SUV, stands out as one of the UK’s best-selling cars, celebrated for its reliability, comfort, and customizable features. Similarly, Audi’s Q range of SUVs and Hyundai’s Tucson range are gaining traction, especially with the increasing availability and affordability of their electric versions and range of addons.

In the past five years, compact SUVs like the Nissan Qashqai have emerged as dominant players. These models offer a smaller footprint, typically being more fuel-efficient or electric, and being more easily manoeuvrable in suburban environments, whist retaining the comfort and versatility of larger SUVs. Land Rover, focusing on luxury, has committed to achieving full electrification by 2030 in response to growing customer demand and government policies, increasingly emphasizing the development of more efficient compact SUVs to meet this goal such as the Range Rover Evoque.

Since Q4 2018, petrol-powered SUVs have dominated the market, with approximately 1.2 million purchases. However, hybrid electric SUVs emerged as the second most common type, representing around 600,000 new purchases. Fully electric SUVs, though gaining traction recently, ranked fourth in popularity with approximately 200,000 new purchases. This marks a significant shift from diesel dominance over the past two decades. With many of us at GMAP being environmentally minded and opting for electric vehicles, we are eagerly anticipating further evolution in propulsion types of SUVs over the next five years.

Estate and 5-door hatchback models dominate the UK SUV market, accounting for around 2.4 million of the total 2.6 million new SUV purchases. These models prioritize interior space, facilitating ample load-carrying capacity and versatility for various outdoor activities, often a key requirement for SUV drivers. Coupe SUVs rank as the third most common body type but represent fewer than 100,000 new SUV purchases, primarily associated with specific BMW X and Range Rover models, limiting their widespread popularity.

The SUV Market over time

Quarterly total new SUV sales have exhibited sporadic patterns over the past five years, experiencing a significant decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, with less than 60,000 units purchased at its lowest point, where many people’s income dropped, travel reduced significantly, and many workers switched to remote work.

However, sales are now showing signs of recovery as employers encourage workers back into the office, and travel is unrestricted.

Seasonal variability in total new SUV purchases per quarter is common in the automotive market, typically peaking when new models are released around the end of Q1 and Q3 and declining in Q2.

Both compact and large SUV models exhibit similar trends at both annual and quarterly levels, although these changes are more pronounced in more popular compact SUV models, with unsurprising peaks in Q1 and Q3.

Despite a trough experienced in 2020, SUV sales have shown growth each year, and we anticipate that they will increasingly dominate the automotive market in the coming years.

Interestingly, when analysing sales over time by the top 5 brands based on overall sales, their quarterly sales generally show a decreasing trend.

This trend could be attributed to their initial dominance in the industry, yet now are facing increasing competition from other brands releasing more SUV models. With the growing demand for SUVs in general, and particularly electric vehicles, other manufacturers such as BMW, Volvo, and Mercedes are entering the market with their luxury electric series.

Our Thoughts

Despite slightly falling numbers in the top brands, the increasing popularity trend overall is clearly illustrated when filtering to SUVs of different propulsion types. Hybrid electric-po wered SUVs accounted for approximately 10,000 new SUV sales in Q4 2018 and have since become the most common form of propulsion for new SUV sales in Q4 2023, reaching around 60,000 units. In contrast, diesel sales have experienced a significant decline from approximately 60,000 in Q4 2018 to about 10,000 in Q4 2023. This shift is a response to UK government policy mandating the total phase-out of new diesel vehicles by 2035, aimed at reducing carbon emissions and improving air quality. Petrol-powered SUV sales have also decreased, from over 80,000 to around 50,000 by Q4 2023. Although petrol vehicles are also subject to this policy, their decline has been relatively less pronounced due to limited electric infrastructure and their ability to meet other requirements such as clean air zones more frequently.

Fully electric SUVs have shown remarkable growth, rising from almost zero sales in Q4 2018 to nearly 20,000 by Q4 2023, indicating promising future expansion. However, hybrid electric vehicles are also included in this legislation, suggesting that these charts may undergo further changes in the coming years, with an expected exponential increase in market share for fully electric SUVs.

When comparing segments, sales of large SUVs have remained relatively stable since Q4 2018, ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 units per quarter. In contrast, compact SUVs are experiencing slight growth, reflecting the trend towards hybrid and fully electrified vehicles in this category.

Conclusion

Another essential aspect of DVLA data not covered here is its integration into geographical regions, enabling sales segmentation by UK post districts and post sectors. At GMAP, we seamlessly integrate DVLA data into our location intelligence tool, MVPLUS , enhancing geodemographic analysis across the automotive industry and beyond. For more information about MVPLUS , DVLA data , or our other location intelligence solutions , reach out to us at info@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

GMAP Predicts 2024 Eurovision Winner Using AI Modelling | GMAP

Thu, 02 May 2024 16:29:39 GMT

GMAP Predicts the 2024 Eurovision Winner

2nd May 2024

GMAP Predicts the 2024 Eurovision Winner

As experts in geographical modelling, wouldn’t it be possible to predict who will win the Eurovision Song Contest? We first developed a model to do just this many years ago and used it to predict Ukraine’s first ever win in 2004. Since then its success has been more limited, as we frequently failed to account for the Je ne sais quoi that makes a Eurovision winner.

Now, 20 years later, it’s time to see if we can build a model to predict who will win this year.

The Eurovision Model

We will start this year with a simple model that looks for geographical biases in our scoring preferences. To do this, we have ranked every entry for the past 10 years. These historical rankings were actually carried out each year in advance of the Contest, so there has been no adjustment for hindsight. Then, when compared to the actual results, the model builds index scores to show which countries we have been biased towards or against. The final step is to apply these index scores to our rankings for 2024. This results in our prediction of who will qualify from the Semi-Finals, and then the scores for the Grand Final on 11 May.

Anomalies in the Data

A good model is only as good as the data that goes into it. Anomalies in the data need to be smoothed out, otherwise the results will be based on distorted data. Anything we got wrong in our judging would otherwise be amplified in future years. Thus, after some of us failed to predict the win for Portugal in 2017, the index score for Portugal rocketed, meaning every low score for Portugal would get translated into a high final result after that. So, to minimise the effect of Portugal being the predicted winner each year, we smooth out the distortions using as many years’ data as possible. We have gone back as far as 2016 – prior to this, the final results weren’t split between the Jury and Public votes, so it seems a good place to draw the line.

First Semi Final

If you didn’t know, 37 countries compete this year in two Semi-Finals followed by a Grand Final. The top 10 from each Semi-Final qualify, plus the Big Five (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK) and the host country (Sweden). Spoiler alert: these are GMAP’s predictions for the first Semi-Final. The top 10 qualify, the next five don’t.

The model predictions are generally in line with our scoring this year, except some such as Cyprus and Moldova have jumped up the rankings. This is because we missed the appeal of Cyprus with Fuego in 2018 and Moldova with the saxophone in 2017. Obvious how we got it wrong when you see them live on the night; they did much better than we predicted. We’ve smoothed out the anomalies, but these are still countries we consistently underestimate.

What a shame for poor Ireland. Some of us had Ireland as their favourite out of the entire list of 37 countries. The model has done its job, taken our geographical bias into account, and listed it as a non-qualifier. It’s borderline however, so fingers crossed they do get through on the night.

Note: this is the first year Luxembourg has entered since 1993. Index scores for Luxembourg have been modelled by using an average of the rest of the scoring for all other countries. We’re not basing it on the fabulousness of France Gall .

Figure 1: First Semi Final

Second Semi Final

This one contains the overall winner, and it’s a landslide victory in terms of the winner of this Semi-Final. It’s borderline around the qualification mark, so there may be hope for the likes of Austria yet.

Figure 2: Second Semi Final

The Grand Final

According to the model, Switzerland wins for the first time since 1988. Back then it was a two-horse race with just one point in it against the UK. The closeness in scores was a bit embarrassing, given that Switzerland had a 20-year old Céline Dion (dubious outfit, but we’ve all been there). This year, we predict Switzerland as a clear winner, no doubt about it.

Finland , the Netherlands and Croatia are comedy entries. The Finnish one is actually laugh-out-loud funny most of the way through. And the Croatian one tells of the brain drain from his poor country to the rich West. But comedy ones don’t generally win, whether they do an homage to 2-Unlimited or not ( if you’re reading this, you can get down off the table now, Jibs ), they just do better than expected. That might mean these come a bit higher than we’ve predicted.

The twins from Sweden are interesting here. If we assume Switzerland will win (the bookies also think so, and they are rarely wrong these days), then the one we are most at odds with the bookies with is Sweden. Our group scores it second. We normally score Sweden high, so the model has pushed it down into fifth place. The bookies have Sweden in 15 ^th place, so this is one worth watching. Perhaps we have got this completely wrong (no surprise based on past experience) or the host country might have got it right again this year.

Figure 3: Grand Final

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

Do you think our Eurovision modelling is correct? Are there any variables you think we should add in next year? Let us know in the comments!

Curious about how GMAP's modelling and Ideal Network Planning skills can help you to predict changes in your network, improve your store network's coverage and efficiency and help you to make large decisions such as where to open or close sites?

To find out more about GMAP’s location intelligence and planning consultancy services , – get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Five Years of GMAP Analytics: Directors' Statement

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 16:42:20 GMT

Five Years of GMAP Analytics: Directors' Statement

30th April 2024

Five Years of GMAP Analytics: Directors' Statement

Time flies when you’re having fun, and we can’t quite believe that we are celebrating five years of GMAP Analytics today.

Reflecting on the last five years we’ve completed many consultancy projects, across numerous industries, all around the world. We consolidated what we had and have then developed new products and datasets; IMPACT, RetailVision and LeisureVision. Our team has grown considerably, from mainly analytical backgrounds, to fulfil the variety of disciplines required to build GMAP Analytics into a thriving independent business and form a cohesive and skilful team. It is to the team’s credit that in 2024 we are well on track to achieve our original 5 year goals.

So, what about the next five years? We will approach the next period of development with increasing confidence and ambition as we continue to maintain and grow our business relationships, seeking to help our clients make informed geographical decisions. We can look forward to expanding our team while continuing to innovate and enhance our products and datasets.

As Directors we have found our first five years extremely exciting, enjoyable and rewarding. It is incredibly satisfying to see our team flourish and grow both in their careers and personally. We are proud of the skill, enthusiasm and commitment we get to see every working day. The spirit of agility and determination we witnessed during our first year as an independent company switched seamlessly to the fortitude and resilience to steer us through the challenges of COVID-19. We cannot overstate our appreciation for the commitment and loyalty of our, how many other small businesses have an average length of service of over 14 years, and we are extremely thankful for this.

So what have we learnt from the past five years as Directors of GMAP Analytics?

We’ve learnt that people are much more than their titles, and that title should not restrict anyone’s growth or upskilling.
Secondly, how rewarding it is to take a risk.
Third, to be grateful to your parents; we are grateful for the initial support and our ongoing relationship with TransUnion following the acceptance of our MBO offer.
We have learnt the importance of respecting one each other.
Last, but by no means least, gratitude for our long-term client relationships, and all those who have continued to work with us throughout the years.

As leading providers of Location Intelligence Data , Software & Consultancy globally, we remain passionate about our work. We are proud of the legitimacy and accuracy of the work we do, and the ways our product team and consultants continue to find ways to innovate and maintain our importance and relevance to all industries. While others have heralded the death of bricks and mortar, and the high street, we did not doubt that our work would remain important and arguably more so as we move towards a new era of localisation and distribution.

May we round-off by extending a few more thank you’s:

to all our clients, new and old, for fantastic partnerships, projects and support.
to Nexus, where we are based for supporting us and encouraging innovation across all sectors.
to Simon on the Streets and all the fun ways we have joined together as a team to support the charity’s work.
and finally to all our staff, we’re so excited to continue to develop and innovate together.

Roll on five more years, looking forward to a healthy balance of challenges and fun along the road.

Matthew Cawcutt and John Chesworth

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

To find out more about GMAP’s location intelligence and planning consultancy services and our products and datasets – get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Changing Tracks: The Evolution of UK Railways in a Consumerist Era

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 14:11:27 GMT

Changing Tracks: The Evolution of UK Railways in a Consumerist Era

28th March 2024

Spatial Analysis of the UK's Railways

The UK’s rail network, just like the UK's retail network, is a dynamic commercial landscape. With the changes in remote and hybrid working, the growing popularity of e-commerce, as well as rail strikes and the growth in electric vehicles, the need for adaptation and growth in rail is clear. In this blog, we discuss the distribution of train stations and the potential ways to encourage train use in the UK, using MVPLUS .

The History of Rail

The British Railway system started with humble local isolated wooden wagonways in the 1560s, which by the late 18th century turned into a web of local rail links operated by private railways companies. By the 1840s these solitary links transformed into a national network, still run by multiple competing companies. Over time these condensed into a handful of larger rail companies.

In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, as the first modern railroad in the UK. It set the mould for railway, as the first to have scheduled services, terminal stations and services, and carrying both freight and passengers.

The government brought the entire network under their control during the First World War, and after this only the Big Four of Railway were left to run the network. From 1948 the Big Four were nationalised to form British Railways, under government control. Between 1994 and 1997, British Rail was privatised, after the government argued privatisation would improve passenger services and help the economy.

Through all this, rail was essential for moving people and freight for personal and business uses, but as the UK’s industrial sectors transformed and shrunk, the movement of people became the more common use of rail.

What Are The Challenges To Rail?

COVID-19

As shown by Figure 2 , before COVID-19 long-term rail demand was increasing. However, during and after COVID-19 this pattern has slowed, although recent trends suggest an increased use of rail with more companies working more days in the office.

Figure 4 shows that in England in 2021 , almost half of all rail journeys were for commuting . This in hand with the 2024 statistics, which estimate that only 30% of UK companies are working fully on-site today , as opposed to 57% pre-COVID, highlight a potential challenge for maintaining a successful and profitable rail. The recent 2023 GOV.UK report explains that although 1,385 million passenger rail journeys were made in FYE March 2023, an increase of 39.9% on the previous year, this was a decrease of 20.4% on the FYE March 2020. However, as Figure 3 shows, passenger journeys have increased in 8 of the last 10 quarters, and although passenger journeys are not back to pre-pandemic levels, they are rising steadily towards them.

This suggests that the rail industry needs to take action to hold on to its current commuters and encourage growth in this area, but also potentially focus on those other purposes such as leisure and education, and ensure these purposes are marketed and therefore grow, as commuting lessens throughout the next few years.

E-Commerce

As more and more people have access to technology, the use and reliance on e-commerce rises. In fact, in 2023, the UK was predicted to have nearly 60 million e-commerce users , leaving only a minority as physical store only buyers. This change in retail habits means that the retail spaces in and around train stations will need to strategise.

A few of these potential strategies could be:

Having Click and Collect for various shops – clothing/grocery/presents, at train stations. Finland’s state-owned postal service Posti, has opened a new “click and collect” concept called Box in Helsinki which offers this service.
Having rooms for meetings, conferences and collaborative working in train stations.
Investing in the food industry. One of the predicted trends for 2024 is that train stations will be the new food destinations . With train delays and strikes as well as the want for bespoke food and drink, train stations can really become part of the destination if they plan well.

In fact, rail could learn a lot from retail, in particular to tackle the areas of loyalty and engagement. The more modern ideas of encouraging customer and business to collaborate for mutual benefit, and for businesses to sell an immersive or unique experience, could help to revitalise the rail industry.

Location Analysis of the UK Train Network Provision

Rail simply cannot be everywhere!

In the MVPLUS maps below we visualised the percentage of British Train Stations per population at Postcode Sectors in our self-serve location intelligence mapping software, MVPLUS . As you can see, there are clear differences in percentage of people per train station, with the London M25, Wales and Scotland Standard Regions having over half the amount of people per train station than the North East, East Midlands and West Midlands. Scotland, however, is slightly misleading due to the large rural areas with low population but plentiful train line.

The location and hotspots of train stations in Britain are shown in the hotspot map, revealing that the vast majority of train stations in Scotland are in the south, in a band from Glasgow to Edinburgh.

In further analysis we ran 10 minute drive time catchments on the train stations in Britain to assess the different accessibility to train travel for the UK population. The green areas are those within a ten minute drive of a train station, as shown in more detail in the zoomed in map of Wales on the right.

Here you can see a clear band of green along the train line, and therefore the areas where the population have higher accessibility to train travel. The areas in red are those that have the lowest accessibility to train travel. Within Britain, we can see the band of red around the Scottish border without a station nearby. Whereas, the South of England has high train transport accessibility, making it a key housing area for London commuters.

Can you spot any more patterns in the map? Let us know in our LinkedIn post comments.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

The UK Rail Industry is a complex and ever changing one, just like the UK Retail industry. Will these challenges of COVID-19, remote working, e-commerce and accessibility cause greater problems? Or will these challenges provide the ammunition for greater change and transformation? We can’t wait to find out.

Curious about how to navigate the changes in the transport industry in hand with the retail industry, or wanting to use mobility or retail data to understand your transport network? To find out more about GMAP’s location intelligence and planning consultancy services , as well as the mapping product we used in this blog, MVPLUS – get in touch at info@gmap.com , or contact me personally at charlotte.walker@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Byte-sized Brilliance: AI in Location Planning Consultancy

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 13:55:46 GMT

Byte-sized Brilliance: AI in Location Planning Consultancy

14th March 2024

AI in Location Planning Consultancy

AI has been a key topic of conversation across most industries, and location planning is no exception! In this blog we’ve explored the role of AI can play in Location Planning, and how this is combined with our GMAP consultancy to ensure we still provide our clients with expert insights for their decision making!

Developing the Scene: What is Ai?

Machine learning (ML) models and artificial intelligence (AI) are branches of statistical modelling, whereby models 'learn' patterns within datasets to generalize on unseen data. ML algorithms first emerged in the mid to late 20th century, and they have evolved into incredibly popular and successful predictive modelling algorithms such as Random Forests and Extreme Gradient Boosting machines. AI techniques were initially simple 'perceptron' networks which achieved limited success in early testing.

However, breakthroughs in the last 20 years have made AI techniques increasingly successful in complex tasks and pushed them into the limelight – the most well-known being large language models such as Chat-GPT. ML and AI play an increasingly dominant role in shaping our lives today – from informing supermarkets on what foods to stock and where; to the music recommended to you by Spotify for your daily commute.

At GMAP we are always excited to explore and implement innovative technologies and methods, and also to combine science, art and technology as we have done for the past thirty years in our location planning consultancy and geodemographic analysis .

The Ins and Outs of Ai

There are three main stages in the production of supervised ML and AI systems. Firstly, fitting a model to a ‘training’ dataset containing the predictive and associated ‘target’ variable(s). Model fitting typically refers to a model iteratively tweaking its parameters to optimally relate the predictive variables to the targets. Next, a developer will test different combinations of values for a specified model’s optional ‘settings’ (known as hyperparameters) to maximize its predictive ability for the task on a subset of the dataset not used for fitting. Lastly, predictions are generated for new data that only contain predictive variables.

One of the greatest benefits of ML and AI techniques is their ability to identify deep relationships between predictive and target variables, which may be unknown or invisible to human modelers, often resulting in higher performance. This becomes particularly apparent when datasets are extremely large, often rendering them difficult for humans to work with. Yet, ML and AI algorithms learn more reliable and accurate signals between predictive and target variables with these large datasets. In many specialized tasks with large datasets, these techniques frequently outperform human experts in accuracy, and vastly outperforming them in terms of efficiency and time saved.

The Role of AI in Location Planning

ML and AI are also playing an increasingly significant role in location planning, as big datasets and processing power increase simultaneously. Unsupervised algorithms such as K-Means have become increasingly popular for customer segmentation , automatically grouping similar types of customers together. Supervised algorithms such as Random Forest are increasingly favoured in tasks such as forecasting sales, recommending products to specific customers, and customer retention.

Spatial regression models, for instance, have been utilized in location planning for decades; however, they have shortcomings that can be addressed using ML methods. Spatial regression models typically assume linear relationships between predictive and target variables, which is rarely the reality. Whilst ML models represent nonlinear relationships, which are abundant in real scenarios, resulting in improved accuracy. When applied to location planning, these models have captured relationships in consumer behaviour and spending patterns previously unknown to clients. Furthermore, ML models offer the advantage of adaptability over time, provided they are re-trained with new data reflecting changing patterns and preferences, ensuring ongoing relevance and effectiveness in location planning strategies.

The Challenges of AI Adoption

ML and AI models are undoubtedly powerful, but they can also be impractical, requiring copious amounts of high-quality data, which can be challenging to access and clean sufficiently. Real-world datasets are noisy, containing missing or erroneous values, and are often smaller than ideal, creating challenges for using ML algorithms. Crucially, even when highly accurate outputs are generated, it may be unclear how they were generated – ML and AI models are black boxes.

While research is ongoing to create 'explainable ML' algorithms, their assistance in decision-making may be more limited, as it may be unknown which factors and relationships are most important for the client. Furthermore, there is the phenomenon known as data drift, whereby changing trends in reality are not represented by the model, which may not have been exposed to these trends at the time of training, resulting in vastly reduced accuracy over time. These behaviours are especially common in datasets based on human behaviour, such as retail spending. Consequently, ML models require frequent retraining with new data, which comes with the challenges previously described.

ML and AI systems also come with ethical and environmental concerns due to their data and resource requirements and reliance. Bias inherent in datasets have been known to be learned and reiterated by ML model outputs, potentially resulting in decisions that further exacerbate these biases – for instance, crime prediction models resulting in a higher police presence and arrest rates in certain areas. Due to the enormous amounts of data and processing power used by these systems, a significant and growing percentage of energy is directed towards powering data centres that support these models –in 2022, Google reported approximately 15% of its total energy use was for training ML models .

The Power of Consultancy in Location Planning

Consultancy at GMAP operates with a white-box approach – we make our data sourcing, processing, and modelling predictions clear to our clients through frequent touchpoints with our expert location planners. This transparency maximizes trust-building and improves conflict resolution both within and outside the team, resulting in more satisfactory project outcomes. Discussion plays a major role in our iterative process, from deciding on features to use in models, to explaining the reasons for our modelling results for actual decision-making.

GMAP’s Location Planning Approach: Mixing Science, Art and Technology

At GMAP, we combine providing training and guidance for using our software and interrogating our modelling results, while keeping them sufficiently simple and explainable for clients to utilize independently. Our experience following this approach maximizes client satisfaction, evident in our strong client retention rates and numerous partnerships spanning decades. In contrast, AI systems are black boxes, sacrificing transparency, explainability, and accountability for moderate improvements in performance. In cases where an ML-generated output produces poor results, this can result in degraded trust.

Despite their differences, AI and ML have solid potential to complement our location planning consultancy in ways that add value to our clients, particularly in projects using very large geodemographic datasets or DVLA data . With the growth of open-source ML and AI solutions such as scikit-Learn and TensorFlow, we view tasks where maximizing accuracy is critical over explainability as having the greatest potential for integration. Furthermore, as explainable AI modelling strategies are further researched and developed, these could be effectively incorporated into our Ideal Network Plans (INPs) for more powerful insights, particularly as our location planning data assets continue to grow.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

If you want to find out more about our expert location planning and consultancy services , or our wide array of geodemographic , retail , automotive and leisure datasets and reporting services analytics get in touch at info@gmap.com or contact me personally at tom.wright-anderson@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Counting Sheep and People: A Census-ational Journey

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 12:47:35 GMT

Counting Sheep and People: A Census-ational Journey

15th February 2024

What is the Census?

Every ten years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) undertakes a nationwide survey in England and Wales, capturing data on households and demographics. The National Records of Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agencies conduct their own censuses at similar intervals in their respective countries. The data collected typically includes age group, gender, house type, ow nership, and occupation. At GMAP, we are always excited to delve into exploring and operationalizing the latest census data , such as in our previous blog abou t the census ( see here ), as it reveals the UK’s growth and diversity.

Censuses, however, are far from a modern invention! The oldest surviving census data is from 2 CE in China’s Han Dynasty, revealing a population of 57.7 million people living in 12.4 million households. Babylonian civilizations in 4000 BC began using censuses for food and resource allocation among their growing populations. Nowadays, the census is used by the government and local authorities to inform decisions and resource allocation regarding social programs, infrastructure development, education planning, and housing policies, among other uses. Every day, you and I are likely using services that have been partly influenced by the census without even realizing it!

For the same reasons authorities use census data to increase the value of providing and improving public services, commercial companies can benefit hugely from understanding a country’s geodemographics to maximize customer selection and retention.

The Census in Location Planning

Most famously, the census contains d ata on population geodemographics – ages, genders, and ethnicities of people across the country. For instance, a low-cost gym centre will need to situate its facilities in locations with larg e, dense populations, preferably of a younger demographic, to maximize memberships. Conversely, a high-end specialist well-being facility company will likely situate its facilities in high-population areas with an older age demographic.

The census also provides data on income and employment, which is important for authorities in planning suitable public services and for private companies in siting outlets in locations that fit their target demographic. For instance, lower-budget supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl are more likely to situate stores in areas with higher proportions of lower-income households, as opposed to Waitrose and Booths, which may target high-income neighbourhoods or towns.

Other variables contained within the census include cultural and language diversity, which can also be strong indicators of the types of companies more likely to thrive in certain areas. As town and country-level demographics can change significantly over decadal periods, keeping on top of the latest census data is a surefire way to ensure your business establishes and thrives in the right locations.

The Census at GMAP

Being a people-focused organization, the census is at the core of much of our work, and for this reason, it is built into our specialist location intelligence softwa re, MVPLUS , as a standard feature. Currently, most 2011 Census data is available in MVPLUS, and the 2021 Census data for England and Wales is also accessible for comparis on. However, the Scottish and Northern Irish Censuses are not yet available. They are expected to be accessible in Spring 2024 when our development team will integrate them into your MVPLUS Systems.

The census serves as the cornerstone of much of our work, as a people-focused organization committed to leveraging comprehensive location intelligence data for informed decision-making. In line with this commitment, we have seamlessly integrated it into our specialized location intelligence software , MVPLUS, as a standard feature. Currently, we have incorporated the 2011 Census data, providing valuable insights for our analyses. Additionally, we have included the 2021 Census data for England and Wales to facilitate meaningful comparisons and enrich our understanding of demographic trends. The Scottish and Northern Irish Censuses are not yet available, but they are expected to be accessible in Spring 2024 when our development team will integrate them, further enhancing the depth and breadth of our location intelligence tools. Combined with our geodemographic products such as CAMEO , an even more comprehensive consumer geodemographic classification can be generated for optimal retail or automotive location planning.

Below are some examples of how census in MVPLUS can immediately help inform location decisions:

Image 1, created in MVPLUS, illustrates the variation in populations of 25–29-year-olds in post sectors surrounding Leeds. A gym chain could leverage this information, combined with other indicators, to identify the most suitable post sectors in Leeds for siting a new gym with optimal client numbers.

Conversely, a high-end luxury brand might be interested in discovering neighbourhoods with the highest incomes, typically associated with high-level professional jobs. Identifying these areas is crucial for the brand, as customers residing in such neighbourhoods are more likely to engage with and utilize their products and services.

A luxury brand, when presented with Figure 2 mapping their likely customers, would probably choose to position their next store or service in the western part of the city centre.

Images 3 and 4 illustrate the importance of using the most recent census data for analysis – demographics change! For example, a trampoline park venue chain could analyse how the distribution of their primary user base has changed since 2011 in the suburbs of Plymouth. This analysis would help them identify geodemographic shifts and determine if the optimal location for their next venue may have changed over time.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

Census data plays a crucial role in informing decision-making related to location planning and is a prominent feature in our MVPLUS location planning software , supporting various other projects and solutions, including INPs and Reporting. Since 2011, England's population alone has increased by over 3 million (6.5%) , with notable growth in representation from black and Asian minorities , particularly in cities such as Leicester and Bradford. Understanding the UK's evolving population size, age distribution, ethnicity, and economic makeup is vital for the success of chain businesses. For successful chain business owners, staying well-informed of these demographic changes is essential for achieving business success.

If you are interested in learning more about our location intelligence software, MVPLUS , our Ideal Network Plans , or any of our other location planning data and services, we would love to hear from you. Please feel free to get in touch with us at info@gmap.com or contact me personally at tom.wright-anderson@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Opening Doors: 2024 UK Retail Developments

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 11:47:26 GMT

Opening Doors: 2024 UK Retail Developments

30th January 2024

Everchanging World of UK Retail

As 2023 drew to a close we began to see both the aftermath and the recovery from COVID-19 in the retail location planning world. With 2024 comes the opening of many new stores in the UK, from new and pre-existing brands. At GMAP we often work with retail brands who are looking at entering new markets, as well as providing our RetailVision data to provide a detailed overview of the retail landscape. In 2023 and now entering 2024 there appears to be a slight surge of retailers freshly entering the UK market, a resurgence of retailers that were struck by COVID-19, and a few retail takeovers of fallen retailers such as Wilkos.

From Pop-Ups to Powerhouses: Navigating the World of Temporary Retail

Some retailers are opening their first store and others are using pop-up shops and collaborations to test the UK retail market and create awareness of their brand, products and services. A pop-up shop is a temporary retail space that is typically used to introduce a new product line, test a new market or generate awareness for a product or cause. Pop-up stores are normally located in areas with high foot traffic such as busy streets, malls, and city centres.

ASOS have just finished hosting their first ever pop-up store in London. This is their first dive into physical retailing after being solely online from 1999. This is an interesting strategical move especially after the common clickbait articles regarding the ‘death of the high street’ and the rise of online retailing . They are one of many fashion retailers investing in opening stores in the UK, with Primark, one of ASOS’s competitors, recently promising a £140 million investment in new and existing stores in the UK in the next two years. The pop-up store boasted a collaboration with Snapchat, showing yet again the ongoing retail trend of brand collaborations, which we talked about in our Barbenheimer blog in August. ASOS plan to invest £30 million in brand building as they move away from performance marketing. Perhaps this pop-up is the start of a new physical network for ASOS in the UK?

Similarly, Shein, a competitor to ASOS in their low prices and fashionable clothing, hosted a three day pop up in London in September, showcasing their fashion and homeware. They hosted multiple pop-ups throughout 2023, in the largest UK cities, such as Birmingham, Cardiff and Bristol. Will Shein open a physical store in 2024 and does their branding and pricing allow for this?

Also in London, the Barcelonian travel brand, Tropicfeel opened a two-day pop-up store at the end of September in 2023 to test the UK retail scene and market their brand. Lounge, a clothing company opened their first ever permanent location in London in October in London's Westfield White City, and so have Paul&Shark.

Contrasting to the London retail openings, AVON are opening their first UK stores in "neighbourhood communities" rather than on traditional High Streets, Ms Cretu said, and would be "mini beauty boutiques" showcasing a selection from Avon's range. This change in strategy reflects the impacts of COVID-19 and the rise of e-commerce. Traditionally, AVON is known for its house-to-house representative sales, but COVID-19 halted this strategy. These new openings and AVON’s partnership with Superdrug show the evolving retail planning strategy of AVON.

The Evolution of Retail: Adapting to Changing Consumer Habits

In 2024 the Wilko saga continues! Wilko will open stores in Northern Ireland for the first time this year, and new stores are opening throughout 2024, some owned by B&M, and some by The Range. Will these stores follow the same path as before or will the acquisitions be profitable?

After falling into administration over COVID-19 and losing over 200 stores, Peacocks are due to open 6 new locations this year. Similarly, M&Co have announced they are planning to open 50 new stores over the next two years after falling into administration twice in two years over COVID-19, and being sold to Yours Clothing.

Mountain Warehouse are targeting 50 new store openings in 2024 as it reached record sales in 2023. The founder of Mountain Warehouse, Mark Neale, explained that while their sales online had a large boost over COVID, the growth in in-store sales afterwards show consumers want for both methods of shopping.

This online and physical store approach is being followed similarly by Weird Fish, who are set to open 10 new stores in 2024. They will target market towns, high streets and holiday centres rather than cities like the pop-up stores mentioned above. Weird Fish are a fashion chain sold by Next and Zalando. It will be interesting to see the potential switch from collaborator to competitor, as these brands share the high street.

2024 sees brands expanding their networks to new areas, such as Sephora opening their third UK store in Manchester this summer. This store will be a megastore and their first store in the North, a bold move.

Within the grocery retail market there are similar moves to open new stores, however at a slower and less publicised pace than in previous years. ALDI are investing £56 million into new openings and existing stores in Scotland, after becoming Scotland’s third largest grocer in 2023, stepping ahead of Sainsburys and Morrisons for the first time. ASDA have opened lots of Express shops in 2023, and have recently announced they are on track to open 1,000 more sites throughout the UK and Northern Ireland by March 2024. This is partially due to their acquisition of 132 sites from their competitor Co-op in 2023, 116 of which they’ve said will be converted to ASDA Express Stores.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

As you can see no brand is the same, and each has to carefully consider their location strategy depending on what their business looks like. For example: who is their target audience; what are their business objectives; and how strong is their brand attractiveness? This is why location planning and data-driven location intelligence is crucial to ensure a brand makes the right investments.

To find out more about GMAP’s location intelligence and planning consultancy services , as well as RetailVision , Geodemographic Data and Software products– get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Our Graduate Location Planners Reflect on 6 Months at GMAP

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 11:48:31 GMT

Our Graduate Location Planners Reflect on 6 Months at GMAP

11th January 2024

Our new Graduates have now been part of the GMAP Team for over 6 Months

At GMAP we're always looking to grow in everything we do. Last year we had the joy of hiring two new members of staff. Tom and Charlotte are the newest additions to the GMAP Team! They joined us as Graduate Consultants at the start of July 2023 and have now been with us for six months. We thought it was about time they introduced themselves and let you know what they’ve been up to.

Charlotte Walker - Graduate Location Planner at GMAP

My roots are in Human Geography, this past summer I graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in BA Geography with Quantitative Methods. I specialised in quantitative methods – translating more qualitative people-based theories into statistical analysis and conclusions using programmes such as QGIS and RStudio. This transfers well into my work with GMAP.

I work mainly in the client side of the company, providing client support for our products such as MVPLUS , IMPACT and Reporting , also working in our consultancy projects and network plans. One of my favourite areas of geography is retail geography; if you see a blog about retail I may have written it!

Where am I involved?

One of the ways many of you may have met me in 2023 is through the MVPLUS Update Meetings. I was heavily involved in this process and really enjoyed meeting all of our UK MVPLUS clients to chat through the multiple ways we have updated the MVPLUS functionalities and datasets. I’ve also been involved in training new users and building new MVPLUS systems in many different markets across the globe for our growing MVPLUS users. I’m sure 2024 will be busy with more MVPLUS updates and users! If you’re interested in learning more about MVPLUS please get in touch .

I’ve also been involved in multiple network planning projects mainly in the automotive and forecourt sectors, as well as supporting some of our retail projects. It has been really interesting learning about GMAP’s famous Spatial Interaction Modelling and seeing how it plays out in a Network Planning Project from start to finish.

I’ve learnt more about Reporting , and how GMAP can build bespoke reporting dashboards to provide geographical insight into sales, customer, and other company data to inform business decision-making. I’ve worked frequently on a reporting dashboard we’ve custom built for one of our automotive clients. One of my favourite things about GMAP is how we work not just for clients, but with clients. We work hard to provide solutions specifically for each client, and it’s been really enjoyable to problem solve with clients to make their projects excel. I’ve worked on various specialised geodemographic projects with some of our retail clients, using our geodemographic datasets and MVPLUS to analyse client customer bases and catchments. I’m looking forward to figuring out more solutions for our clients in 2024!

About Me

Other than working at GMAP, my weeks often consist of coffee dates with friends, escaping to the countryside for long muddy walks, and growing, swapping and generally just enjoying my many houseplants. My New Years Resolution/Plan for the GMAP Team is for us to have an office houseplant – we’ll see how that one goes!

I’m grateful for the warm welcome and immersive 6 months I’ve had with GMAP Team, and the many coffee pods I’ve dutifully worked my way through! I’m looking forward to the next 6 months at GMAP, in particular getting to meet, collaborate and problem solve with more clients and being more involved in our many Network Planning projects.

Tom Wright-Anderson - Graduate Consultant at GMAP

I joined GMAP in July 2023 alongside Charlotte, having graduated from the University of Leeds in Physical Geography.

I specialized in processing and modelling environmental data, culminating in a dissertation generating flood forecasts in Leeds using AI.

Prior to working at GMAP, I worked for a year at the UK Hydrographic Office producing and updating digital maps for shipping and military clients.

I am a keen outdoorsman, regularly hiking, cycling and camping throughout the year in the British countryside – by summer you’ll find me swimming in waterfalls or climbing mountains, and by winter cycling through whatever the weather may be! Indoors, I love challenging myself weightlifting at the gym; working on personal coding projects and Kaggle competitions; and playing board games with friends.

What I've learnt so far

Since joining GMAP 6 months ago I’ve learned a huge amount about techniques and challenges in processing spatial datasets using software such as FME and SQL. The learning curve has been steep yet gratifying. These tools have transitioned from being unfamiliar, to becoming indispensable, allowing me to contribute meaningfully to our data processing workflows and I am excited to continue using their advanced functionalities. As we transition to more cloud-based technology I am eager to learn about and utilise their capabilities to further enhance our services.

Where I'm Involved at GMAP

My work lies mostly within the production side of the business, updating our products such as LeisureVision with fresh data and new features; developing new products, and processing data used for our Ideal Network Plans . I’m also involved in maintaining our datasets and supporting curation for new datasets to enhance our analyses. No day is the same for me at GMAP from wrangling datasets in Python, to generating drivetime matrices across Europe and America, and from time to time supporting our regular blog posts .

My strengths lie within GIS software and programming languages, mostly SQL and Python. Combining these tools enables us to efficiently generate useful insights whether this being optimizing forecourt locations or defining customer bases within your retail networks. I’ll also be supporting the development of our reporting tools, creating interactive visualizations vital for decision making.

What I'll be doing in 2024

Through 2024 expect to see our products regularly updating with new data, visuals, and functionalities. I hope to expand my Python and data processing skillsets, automating more processes, and generating more insightful and engaging outputs. I’m looking forward to continuing to collaborate with the team, connecting with existing and new clients; and taking ownership of our census dataset and associated products. I am also actively seeking opportunities to integrate machine learning into our processing or outputs, which you may expect to see in future products or services.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

If you are interested in joining GMAP and helping to provide location planning consultancy and location intelligence insight to clients across the world in automotive, retail and multiple other sectors - please visit gmap.com/careers .

We are always happy to talk to those who will be a great addition to the team!

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Behind the Boxes: Unwrapping Amazon's UK Distribution Landscape

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 17:56:24 GMT

Behind the Boxes: Unwrapping Amazon's UK Distribution Landscape

14th December 2023

Behind the Boxes: Unwrapping Amazon's UK Distribution Landscape

Leading up to Christmas, retailers such as Amazon depend on their distribution networks to ensure Santa delivers on time! Furthermore, nowadays many Christmas days are propped up by the speed and efficiency of Amazon deliveries. At GMAP, we have generated drivetime catchments using our MVPLUS mapping software to visualize and analyse the regions of UK best served by Amazon Distribution Centres.

Location Analysis of Amazon's Distribution Centers

As of 2023, the UK has 27 Amazon distribution centres (ADCs) ranging in size from 600,000 to 1 million square feet depending on their catchment and products supplied. These are technologically advanced facilities employing thousands of employees each working alongside robots that are responsible for picking, packing, and subsequently transporting Amazon deliveries.

Delivering close to one billion packages annually, ADCs play an almighty role fulfilling Christmas days across the UK! Ensuring their Amazon Distribution Centres are strategically placed is vital for maximizing customer accessibility and minimizing transit costs with shorter journeys. Interestingly, most ADCs lie within a band extending from East London to Liverpool (Figure 1), potentially due to their proximity to transport links, ideal land for building massive facilities, and younger workforce. At either end, ADCs are facilitated by significant port and rail infrastructure, maximizing incoming international delivery distribution.

30% of the UK Population Live within 30 minutes of an ADC

Almost 30% of the UK population live within 30 minutes drivetime of an Amazon Distribution Centre (Figure 2). These catchments effective cover East London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and many smaller cities between. These catchments likely have younger populations providing for ADCs large manual workforce demands, and potentially also being larger consumers of Amazon products.

Many of these ADCs lie close to the North-South M6 and M1 motorways, maximizing catchment areas even with short drivetimes. However, Northern Ireland, Central and Northern Scotland, and South-West England are untouched by 30-minute drivetimes from ADCs, likely owing to their poorer transport infrastructure and smaller customer bases. Amazon Manchester serves the greatest population within 30 minutes drivetime, at approximately 2.2 million, whilst Amazon Gourock serves the smallest population, at approximately 100,000.

Over 42 Million People Live Within 60 Minutes of an ADC

The greatest increase in customer base occurs between 30- and 60-minute drivetimes, where over 42 million people, ~63% of the UK population live within (Figure 3). Greater London and Central England are now entirely within 60 minutes of an ADC. The UK’s largest cities: London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Glasgow are fully served by ADCs, accounting for the significant rise in customer base. A large proportion of the Welsh population residing in Cardiff and Swansea also now reside within an ADC catchment. Cumbria, Northumberland, and Southwest England remain excluded from ADC catchments, in addition to Central and Northern Scotland. Amazon Hemel Hempstead serves the greatest population at almost 5.5 million, whilst Amazon’s 2nd Doncaster center serves only ~200,000.

3/4 of the UK Live Within 90 Minutes of an ADC

Over 50 million people (74%) live within 90 minutes of an Amazon Distribution Centre. By 90-minutes, most of Wales becomes covered, in addition to the central belt in which a large portion of Scotland’s population live (Figure 4). However, Cumbria and Northumberland remain outside these catchments, along with the entirety of Southwest England. This is surprising given several cities: Plymouth, Exeter, Bath, and Southampton support a sizeable combined customer base. Amazon Hemel Hempstead serves the greatest population at over 7.3 million, whilst Amazon’s 2nd Doncaster center only provides for an additional ~200,000, though Doncaster’s main ADC provides for ~4 million.

South-West and Newcastle are Not Within 2-Hours of an ADC

83% of the UK population are served by an Amazon Distribution Centre within a 2 hour drivetime. Newcastle, Exeter, and Plymouth remain the only large settlements not provided for by an ADC at this drivetime range, despite their proximity to the M1 and M5 respectively (Figure 5). Northern Scotland remains isolated from ADCs, though this is unsurprising given its least densely populated region of the UK and has limited transport infrastructure. Amazon Dunfermline has greatly expanded its coverage to most of Southern Scotland, supporting a significant portion of Scotland’s population.

Wales is now fully covered within these catchments, including through its most remote central and north regions. Amazon Hemel Hempstead continues to supply to the greatest number of customers at almost 9 million, with its catchment encompassing West London and Southern cities including Southampton.

Most of England are Within 3-Hours of an ADC

By 3-hour drivetimes, the whole of England excluding South Devon and Cornwall are within an Amazon Distribution Centre catchment (Figure 6). Southern and Central Scotland are entirely covered by Amazon Gourock and Dunfermline centers, serving ~5 million customers, or 90% of Scotland’s population. Amazon Dunfermline has the largest unbroken catchment being one of 2 ADCs in Scotland, and with good transport links via the A1, M9, M8 and M74.

Amazon Swansea is an important Amazon Distribution Centre for customers in South Wales and extending into Southwest England close to Plymouth, which remains the only large settlement (population ~250,000) not covered by an ADC. At the range, Amazon Hemel Hempstead operates for ~10 million customers, whilst at the other end of the spectrum Amazon’s 2nd Doncaster center; Amazon Warrington, and Amazon Rugeley serve less than 500,000 customers each, filling in ‘gaps’ in coverage of preexisting centers.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

Amazon Distribution Centres will play a vital role in providing for the UK’s Christmas, with their strategic location placement maximizing customer reach. Only extreme Northern Scotland and Southwestern England remain outside of an Amazon Distribution Centres within 3 hours drivetime, where last minute present shopping may not be fully possible! It will be interesting to see whether, and how, Amazon will fill these remaining gaps in the UK market in the coming years as their operations continue to expand.

If you would like to find out more about our drivetime analysis services using our purpose-built location intelligence software MVPLUS, location intelligence data , or location planning consultancy please reach out to us at info@gmap.com and we will be thrilled to help.

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

The Growth of Chinese Brands in the UK Electric Vehicle Market

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 10:27:04 GMT

The Growth of Chinese Brands in the UK Electric Vehicle Market

15 th November 2023

The Battery Electric Vehicle Market Growth

Here at GMAP we’ve keeping an eye on how fast the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) market is growing in the UK. The transition away from new Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles is gaining traction as OEM’s plan for the UK Governments 2035 target. New BEV registrations have risen at a rapid pace; “ there are now over half a million ” , with consumers choosing these greener alternatives to traditional fossil fuel powered vehicles. We've used our expert automotive knowledge plus our automotive data to analyse the growth of Chinese automotive brands in the UK Electric Car Market.

Big Changes in the Automotive Market

The transition from ICE to BEV is possibly the biggest shake up the Automotive market has ever witnessed. With this, comes an opportunity for new entrants to challenge the traditional OEM’s, such as Chinese EV brands, gaining valuable market share as European brands struggle to transition their range of models from ICE to BEV. Gartner predicts that more than 50% of BEV’s sold globally will be from Chinese brands by 2026. This is no surprise given that China overtook Japan this year as the world’s biggest exporter of automobiles.

In recent years, MG have been re-born under SAIC and have aggressively entered the UK market with rapid growth, opening over 160 dealerships. Other Chinese owned brands, namely Volvo, Polestar and Lotus (all Geely owned) have developed EV offerings with Volvo owned Polestar being a dedicated EV-only brand. Lotus is currently transitioning away from being a low-volume specialist brand to a premium EV brand, with its first model the Eletre. Zeekr and Lynk & Co (also Geely owned) which will inevitably launch in the UK in the coming years.

On top of this newer, less familiar Chinese entrants are planning rapid expansion in the UK. BYD, for example, are planning to have 100 dealers in the UK by 2025 and have partnered with a number of dealer groups including Pendragon, Lookers and Arnold Clark. BYD started life as a battery production company and then transitioned into automobile production. Being responsible for their own battery production saves significant costs as well as having less reliance on external supply chain constraints. All in all, this can mean reduced lead times for consumer orders and more importantly a cheaper product.

Consumers are increasingly seeking out value propositions, and Chinese owned brands are ready to capitalize on this. This is being shown in the data with BYD now being ahead of Tesla for quarterl y production of BEV’s and being second to them in terms of global sal es, as shown in Figure 1.

Great Wall owned ORA is aiming to have 20 sales sites by the end of 2023 with just the one model, the ORA Funky Cat. ORA have adopted a traditional dealer model, maximising geographical coverage where EV demand is highest and have currently partnered with Lookers, Peter Vardy and Chorley Group plus more.

Although still relatively early days for Chinese entrants in the UK market, GMAP investigated how their share of the EV market had changed in recent years compared to the total EV car market. GMAP analysed new BEV car registrations for 2018 – Q3 2023, in Figure 2 to see how the market share of Chinese brands has changed over this period. A basket of Chinese brands containing; MG, Polestar, Volvo, BYD, Great Wall (ORA) and Lotus were used in the analysis.

New BEV car registrations surpassed the 200,000 threshold for the first time in 2022 and this figure is projected to increase again in 2023. This shows the rapid growth of the BEV market with new registrations being less than 100,000 in 2020 and less than 50,000 in 2019. Chinese brands within the EV market have also witnessed rapid growth, as shown in the figure above. The basket of Chinese brands mentioned above had a modest collective market share of around 2% in 2019, their growth has since outpaced the market to achieve almost an 18% market share up to Q3 2023. Due to the high initial cost of EV’s, the majority of these vehicles are purchased on a lease plan. If we look at just the Private market, those which have purchased their vehicle outright, we see a very similar pattern. The Private market share of the Chinese brands was around 3% in 2019, with less than 500 registrations. This has then grown to around 17% up to Q3 2023. Registrations for Chinese brands were highest in 2022 and again, this looks to be surpassed in 2023.

Electric Vehicle Sales Analysis

The graph above, Figures 3, shows how EV sales have changed over time broken down by type of ownership; fleet or private. Additionally, Figure 3 compares these changes over time for all brands versus Chinese brands.

In terms of individual brand growth, MG was responsible for the majority of the market share increase witnessed for Chinese brands. MG alone had more than ten times the number of new private registrations in 2023 than the other Chinese brands combined. In terms of fleet numbers, they had more than Polestar and Volvo combined. The vast majority of EV Volvo and Polestar registrations are in the form of fleets, with very few privately registered cars. It is still very early days for the other Chinese brands included in this analysis as they only had around 1,200 new registrations between them. It will be interesting to see how quickly this number grows as BYD and Great Wall owned ORA, increase the size of their dealership networks. ORA were targeting 5,000 registrations of their Funky Cat model in 2023, the data suggests they are quite a way off reaching this target.

More Chinese brands are planning to enter the UK market in 2024 and 2025, namely NIO, Xpeng and Chery. Chery are China’s largest c ar exporter so it will be interesting to see what sales model they adopt as they enter the UK. NIO are targeting 25 locations by 2025 in a direct-to-consumer sales model and look to take the UK by storm with battery swap technology in their vehicles. Xpeng is already established across Europe and is poised to enter the UK market in 2024 and will likely implement a traditional dealership model. Volkswagen recently invested over £500m in Xpeng and purchased a 5% stake of the company with the aim of using the Xpeng EV platform within their own models. This shows the confidence that the traditional OEM’s have in Chinese EV platforms.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Conclusion

At a time when consumer budgets are tighter than ever due to an on-going cost of living crisis, consumers are constantly looking for better value in the market whilst still wanting a quality product. Despite the recent reduction in price, the still high initial cost of BEV ownership is off-putting to some consumers, which may still favour the cheaper ICE alternatives. This provides a prime opportunity for these new Chinese market entrants to provide a value proposition and disrupt the market. As the presence of these new brands grows in the UK, it will be interesting to see how they are perceived by UK consumers and if this translates into higher market shares and overall success.

If you would like to learn more about how you could gain insight into the UK vehicle market and growth of BEVs using the DVLA Data - get in touch at info@gmap.com.

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

National Get Outside Day: Outdoor Retail & Leisure Facility Provision

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 15:14:22 GMT

National Get Outside Day: Provision of Outdoor Retail & Leisure Facilities

27th September 2023

What is National Get Outside Day?

Sunday 24th September marked 2023’s National Get Outside Day , with this year’s theme being ‘Precious Places’. The UK’s precious places: Areas of Outstanding National Beauty (AONBs), National Scenic Areas (NSAs) and National Parks collectively cover ~25% of its land area, offering incredible adventurous opportunities nationwide . The UK’s outdoor scene is world famous in many respects, ranging from the Lake District, a UNESCO world heritage site famed for its hiking and climbing, to the Jurassic Coast, another UNESCO world heritage site, home to a range of fossils found nowhere else on Earth. We have great reason to enjoy and preserve our Great British outdoors.

Outdoor activity is a shared passion amongst the GMAP team, having completed the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge in Summer 2022 , and others being keen hikers, cyclists and sailors in our spare time. By applying our location intelligence data , software, and tools, we established the UK’s trends and opportunities in outdoor equipment and leisure facilities markets using our products RetailVision and LeisureVision. In this blog we will explore whereabouts the hotspots and gaps in the UK’s outdoor equipment and activity provision are.

Figures 1.1 - 1.3: Members of our GMAP Team enjoying the great outdoors

Provision of Outdoor Equipment Retailers

Before venturing into the outdoors on any kind of adventures, it is important to be fully equipped. Fortunately, the UK is well-served by a diverse and expanding outdoor sports market, f orecasted to grow annually ~3% between 2023 and 2027, permitting a greater variety of outdoor activities and numbers of participants. However, surprising gaps and trends were revealed in a preliminary analysis conducted using RetailVision and visualized with our bespoke mapp ing software MVPLUS .

Outside of London, the greatest concentrations of outdoor equipment outlets were in cities surrounding the Peak District; namely Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle and Cardiff also are notable though unsurprising hotspots. Amongst the outdoor equipment hotspots included Keswick, Fort William, and Llanberis, famed as the UK’s adventure towns, with small permanent populations yet disproportionately great outdoor offerings. Outside large settlements, coastal towns had greater outdoor equipment provision, perhaps due to the sea’s enablement of a wider range of outdoor activities.

Gaps in the UK’s outdoor equipment market were also revealed, notably in Northwest Scotland and Central Wales. These are likely due to their low permanent populations, and smaller seasonal population influxes relative to the more famed adventure towns. However Central Wales is within touching distance of several ‘Precious Places’ and Northwest Scotland is peppered with them, both presenting potentially viable locations for future Outdoor Equipment outlets. Combining our retail and geodemographic datasets with our expert location planning consultancy, we will guide your next venture into the UK’s thriving outdoor equipment market.

RetailVision is our product consisting of UK-wide retail outlet locations of over 80,000 stores and covering over 800 brands across 27 categories. Further segmentation by pricing enables comparative evaluation across regions on both the quantity and quality of retail provision. The aggregated RetailVision, RetailVision Destinations, contains identical attributes in a hierarchical format, providing ideal high-level guidance for retail network planning.

Figure 2: MVPLUS Map of UK Outdoor Equipment Retail Outlets (Heat Map) compared to AONBs (Polygons)

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Provision of Outdoor Leisure Facilities

T he UK’s outdoor leisure industry has exploded in recent decades owing to technological advancements enabling activity planning and tracking, increasing equipment and leisure accessibility, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic leading more people outdoors.

Outdoor Leisure Facilities are less concentrated than Outdoor Equipment Outlets, though hotspots are more sporadic with some new hotspots emerging including the Gower Peninsula and Lands’ End. Outside of London, the area of Northern England surrounding the Peak District is best-served by outdoor leisure facilities, likely owing to the region’s high population and abundance of natural areas. These regions are famed for their abundance of hiking and cycling trails in addition to niche sports including paragliding and fellrunning, scattered more widely across the UK.

The greatest gaps in outdoor leisure facilities occur across the East Midlands and throughout Northern Scotland, presumably due to their low populations or lower tourist influxes. However, these areas are relatively better served by outdoor equipment outlets, so smaller-scale outdoor leisure facility expansion may be feasible. Excluding remote Northern Scotland and the Lincolnshire Wolds, most of the UK’s ‘precious areas’ are at least weak outdoor leisure hotspots. These facilities are strongly associated with influxes of visitors during weekends and National Holidays.

Figure 3: MVPLUS Map of UK Outdoor Leisure Facilities (Heat Map) compared to AONBs (Polygons)

Provision of Outdoor Equipment Retailers Compared to Outdoor Leisure Facilities

Figure 4 captures the relationship between outdoor equipment outlet concentration and leisure facilities. Outdoor equipment outlets are concentrated in larger settlements and adventure towns, whilst outdoor leisure facilities are more widely distributed, typically closer to or within precious areas even where equipment outlets are not present. Many of the outdoor leisure facilities outside of cities lie within the UK’s ‘precious areas’ whilst outdoor equipment outlets tend to focus on cities and towns neighbouring these regions and more reliant on higher permanent populations.

LeisureVision is comprised 250,000+ points UK-wide, categorized into 4 large groups including sports and fitness, and further categorized into one of over 100 subcategories. The LeisureVision Destinations version is formatted into Uber’s H3 hexes ( see our recent blog for more detail ) , a flexible and hierarchical set of units created by aggregating mass point data, perfect for a higher-level approach to your next location planning project.

MVPLUS Map of UK Outdoor Equipment Retail Outlets (Heat Map), Outdoor Leisure Facilities (Blue Points) compared to AONBs (Polygons)

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Conclusion

The UK is well-served by outdoor equipment outlets and leisure facilities, though their distribution varies and some regions, including central Wales and Northwest Scotland, are less effectively covered. Outdoor equipment outlets appeared more concentrated in larger settlements with high permanent populations, except for ‘adventure towns,’ whereas outdoor leisure facilities are more widely distributed with more hotspots also occurring in remoter areas.

If you are interested in finding out more about GMAP’s location intelligence services through RetailVision , LeisureVision , and geodemographic data , or our expert location planning consultancy services , and location intelligence software and reporting - get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Providing Location Intelligence with Hexagonal Geographies

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 08:00:01 GMT

Providing Location Intelligence with Hexagonal Geographies

13th September 2023

Exploring Hexagonal Geography

In the past 5 years, Hexagonal Geography, known as H3 , has been the newer and exciting way to visualise data both on maps and in charts in the world of locational intelligence and location planning. However the concept of hexagonal mapping goes back over 100 years!

The map to the right is taken from a book “The Unification of London: The Need and the Remedy” written by John Leighton and published in 1895 and shows how hexagons can be used to depict groupings of locations for better visualisation.

Here at GMAP Analytics we’ve been exploring the use of hexagonal geography for several years. We have used it in a number of projects and products, either as a way to deliver data to clients in MVPLUS or in order to incorporate data into our projects. For example, we use the hexagonal geographies as part of our LeisureVision Destinations product.

What is Hexagonal Geography?

H3 geometries were created and expanded by Uber in 2018. H3 is Uber’s Hexagonal Hierarchical Spatial Index or grid-system with global coverage, designed as a flexible and hierarchical set of units to be utilized in multiple locations for the aggregation of mass point data. Uber used it for the aggregation of GPS tracks from their location tracking of their vehicles to optimise their business strategy by the use of dynamic location-based pricing and servicing.

H3 allows for this optimisation to occur at an efficient and affordable rate, as instead of analysing supply and demand at a fine granularity and the exact location, such as by road or street, Uber can analyse by area, and thus upscale this analysis globally at an affordable and sustainable rate.

Figure 2 depicts this process of bucketing; grouping locations and other geospatial manipulations into hexagons with hierarchical properties. The example in Figure 2.3 depicts the areas with higher density of vehicles in coral and lower density in blue.

Figures 2.1 - 2.3: Process of bucketing points with H3, from Uber

H3 is a Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS), meaning it consists of a series of discrete global grids which have increasingly finer resolution grids, such as the sixteen different hexagonal grid-resolutions. The regular hierarchical relationships between DGGS resolutions create efficient data structures.

However, usual DGGS are based on the geographic coordinate system which is a square grid. These do not have equal area cell regions, making analysis complex as the cells become distorted into triangular shapes. Square grids require multiple sets of coefficients when used for analysis, because they have two different types of neighbours; the ones they share an edge with, and the others, a vertex, as shown in Figure 3. Hexagons have one distance between a hexagon centerpoint and its neighbours’, rather than 2 for squares and 3 for triangles. This simplifies analysis performance and gradients are smoother.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Figure 3.1- 3.3: Distances from a point to its neighbours on different projections

How is Hexagonal Geography useful for analysis?

Hexagonal Geography is a useful tool in providing location intelligence and in location planning as enables geographical areas to be segmented and used for many aspects of analysis. For example, our location planning consultants can analyse demographic or POI data within hexagon cells.. H3 allow for this analysis to occur at different resolutions. This creates powerful analysis and efficient working.

Hexagonal Geography reduces the issues of overlapping point data, which lessens visual distortion. For example, if there are three retail outlets on top of each other, the aggregation to a Hexagon prevents any being forgotten about. The regular hexagonal grids allows for us to store a mix of data. For example, physical attributes can be mixed with demographics, location details, and any other relevant data such as a Hexagon’s LeisureVision Opportunity score. This means we can compare a grid cell individually, or aggregated, to other areas, without limiting your analysis by area size.

One thing to note when using Hexagonal Geography is that it forces irregular shapes, roads, buildings, cities, into hexagonal grids. This can cause the “boundary effect”, making, for example, a population in a coastal area seem lower because the hexagon contains the ocean as well as the land. For this reason, it can be better to use lower resolution Hexagons or aggregate Hexagon clusters.

Hexagonal Geography at GMAP

Here at GMAP Analytics we recognise how useful Hexagonal Geography is for location planning and location analysis. We use Hexagonal Geographies for:

1. Our Location Planning Consultancy projects

2. To build some of our Location Intelligence Data products

3. To deliver data to our clients for use in MVPLUS or their inhouse systems

Hexagonal Geography in LeisureVision

Hexagonal Geographies are used in our LeisureVision Product to create the LeisureVision Destinations. LeisureVision Points are mapped to the H3 Hexagons to allow clients to visualise the distribution of leisure activity in the locality. This can be used to see where there is future opportunity for relocation or new stores. LeisureVision is available within MVPLUS, our online mapping tool, or as a standalone dataset in any projection requested. LeisureVision comprises of data across four product categories: Food & Beverage, Entertainment, Competitive Socialising, and Sports & Fitness. The use of LeisureVision in MVPLUS allows clients to visualise the data alongside other datasets, as well as run catchment analysis on the data.

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Conclusion

Hexagonal Geography helps us to create location intelligence and provide location planning solutions for our clients globally in a visually appealing and modern way. If you are interested in finding out more about GMAP’s use of hexagonal geography, our datasets that use Hexagonal Geography such as RetailVision and LeisureVision or our location planning consultancy services - get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Could Retail Collaborations be as Successful as Barbenheimer?

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 10:16:25 GMT

Could Retail Collaborations Be As Successful As Barbenheimer?

10th August 2023

Exploring Retail Collaborators

We have all heard about the infamous success of pairings with Barbie and Oppenheimer taking over our office coffee break chats the past few weeks. Within the world of retail, businesses are also venturing out two by two. Greggs’ retail strategy very much mirrors that of Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig. Greggs are collaborating with successful British retailers such as Primark, Sainsburys, Tesco and ASDA.

After a year long collaboration with Primark, this month Greggs have opened a café inside the Primark in the Trinity Centre in Leeds. This is the sixth Tasty by Greggs café in the UK over the past year , seemingly a “match made in heaven.”

Figure 1: Greggs’ latest Tasty opening in Leeds Trinity

As well as “ the most instagrammable Greggs the world has ever seen ”, the Greggs and Primark collab boasts three sold out collections of clothing and merchandise. This marriage of retailers follows Greggs’ retail location planning strategy, to pursue “ new on-the-go locations where people work, shop and travel ”.

Greggs have also partnered with well-established grocers. Greggs have cafes within Tesco, Sainsburys and ASDA. There are seven Greggs in Tesco stores nationwide and there are a total of five planned Greggs in ASDA and seven in Sainsburys. They are evidently seeking to broaden their customer base to a wider geodemographic ; including shoppers throughout the week and potentially the Grey Pound.

Similarly Tesco have partnered with Creams Cafes, making Creams Café Tesco Café's first ever franchise partner. The first Creams Cafe to open in Tesco launched also this month in Gateshead, Newcastle. The next opened the day after in Maryhill, Glasgow. Tesco’s Creams cafes serve desserts, ice cream, waffles and pancakes, potentially hoping to tap into the same markets as successful dessert places like Heavenly Desserts.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

The cafes, just like Tasty by Greggs, will feature ‘instagrammable’ decorations such as fluorescent signs, to make the café an experience, combing leisure and retail in one. These retail ventures focus on the “Instagram generation”; drawing the new emerging young working adults into each retailers customer base, hoping for brand loyalty for the rest of each customer’s spending lifetimes.

Figure 2: The new Creams Café in Tesco in Newcastle

Location Analysis of Greggs & Primark

We have used our RetailVision retail location data in our MVPLUS location intelligence software to explore the growing relationship between Greggs and Primark in the UK. As shown below, there are far more Greggs shops in the UK than Primark Shops, with 2182 Greggs and 191 Primark Shops currently.

Figure 3: Location of Greggs in the UK using MVPLUS

Figure 4: Location of Primark Shops in the UK using MVPLUS

Originating in Newcastle, Greggs has a far more even North/South spread, with clusters in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow. Primark’s first store in the UK was in Derby, but its main clusters are in London and Glasgow. It is noticeable that the hotspots of Greggs and Primark shops in the UK correspond, with clusters in London, Belfast, Glasgow and Birmingham. This shows the compatibility of the two retailers in their network strategies.

Figure 5: Heatmap of Greggs in the UK using MVPLUS

Figure 6: Heatmap of Primark Shops in the UK using MVPLUS

Using our projected population data in MVPLUS, we calculated and mapped the density of people per Primark and density of people per Greggs by Postcode Area.

Figure 7: Heatmap of density of predicted population per Primark Shops by Postcode Area using MVPLUS

Figure 8: Heatmap of density of predicted population per Greggs Shops by Postcode Area using MVPLUS

The maps reveal differing patterns of the density of projected population per location. There is a high density of people per Primark store in Northern Ireland, Glasgow and throughout postcode areas in the Midlands and the South. Interestingly, the areas with a low density of people per Primark tend to be neighbouring the areas with a high density, showing Primark’s potential awareness of store cannibalisation.

The postcode areas with a high density of people per Greggs are Newcastle, where Greggs originated, South Wales and Glasgow. It is evident that there are far fewer Greggs in the far South and North of Britain, and in Northern Ireland. Further collaboration with Primark could lead to a greater presence in these regions, as Primark has a high density of people per shop in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the far South of the UK.

Location Planning Opportunities: Areas for Future Collaboration

We analysed the locations of both Greggs and Primark Shops and found three areas where there are no Greggs within 20 kilometres of a Primark shop, a clear opportunity for further collaboration and retail location planning.

Figure 9: Heatmap of the Greggs shops in Cornwall and the Primark Shops, from MVPLUS

The Primark in Truro is 89 kilometres drive from the nearest Greggs, and the area is evidently empty of any Greggs or other Primark shops for over 80 kilometres. This is an obvious spot for more investment and future collaborations, particularly soaking up on the summer tourist trade and travel.

Figure 10: Heatmap of the Greggs shops in Kent and the Primark Shops, from MVPLUS

The Primark in Folkestone is over 13 kilometres from the nearest Greggs, in Dover, and over 70 kilometres from the Greggs further down the coastline in Hastings. Although possibly a prime location for another Greggs, the southern customer market are less exposed to Greggs and therefore too many Greggs in this region may lead to cannibalisation or low profits due to poor use.

Figure 11: Heatmap of the Greggs shops in Northern Ireland and the Primark Shops, from MVPLUS

In Northern Ireland there are multiple Primark Shops without a Greggs within 20 kilometres. The vast majority of Greggs in Northern Ireland are in Belfast, whereas the Primark Shops are spread throughout the country. This is a potential new market for Greggs to expand, and collaboration with the existing Primark Shops could help them to achieve this in cost effective way.

Conclusion

Whether Greggs and Primark’s retail collaboration will go as viral as Barbenheimer is still to be seen, but the network strategy compatibility, the similar customer profile and pricing strategies and the yin-yang store locations all bode well for a successful retail collaboration. Could retail collaborations rejuvenate you as a British retailer after the impact of COVID-19? Our RetailVision data , MVPLUS and our location planning consultancy services are here to help.

To find out more about GMAP’s intelligence data and software products including MVPLUS, or our location planning consultancy services – get in touch at info@gmap.com .

The Location Planning Strategies of Six Retailers Entering the UK

Wed, 24 May 2023 16:10:40 GMT

The Location Planning Strategies of Six Retailers Entering the UK

24th May 2023

Exploring t he Location Planning Strategies of Six Retailers Entering the UK

At GMAP, we often work with international retail brands who are looking at new market entry. With many asking, where should they go first? As you would expect, many international retailers coming to the UK are undoubtedly targeting London-first. However, is this always the case?

We have explored this further by examining the growth strategy of six key international retail brands that have entered the UK market since 2011 and become established names in our retail landscape. These brands include:

Nespresso

Whilst Nespresso didn’t open its first UK shop until 2011, the first idea of Nespresso’s pod coffee capsules date back to 1975, when an employee of Nestlé first pioneered the idea. It took a further decade for the first machines to be launched to consumers in Switzerland, followed by Japan, France, and Italy. Their first concept Nespresso boutique was launched in Paris in 2000, and they now have over 700 sites worldwide and 29 in the UK, including their own stores and pop-up shops.

Nespresso defied the “London-first” location strategy adopted by many retailers when they opened their first UK boutique in The Trafford Centre in April 2012. In June and July of the same year, they opened two sites in London including their Regent Street Flagship. In 2014 they opened in Edinburgh, followed by two more in London in 2015. In 2016, they opened in Bluewater, Bristol, Leeds and another site in London – this was in addition to two concessions in John Lewis stores in Kingston and Peter Jones on Sloane Square.

Nine Nespresso boutiques opened in the UK in 2017, including stores in Newcastle, Milton Keynes, Reading, Sheffield, Nottingham, Southampton, Birmingham, as well as two more in London. The following year, the opening of boutiques in Belfast, Aberdeen, and Glasgow ensured Nespresso was accessible to caffeine-lovers in almost all corners of the nation. They also opened stores in Guildford, Cambridge, and within the Selfridges in Birmingham.

Since 2019, growth of the Nespresso’s boutique portfolio has slowed. In 2020, Nespresso opened stores in London Bridge and a concession in Selfridges on Oxford Street. In 2022, they opened in Liverpool and relocated their Leeds store from Victoria Gate to Trinity Leeds.

In summary, Nespresso has proven that a London-centric approach doesn’t always need to be the rule for a blueprint to successful UK growth.

Carhartt Work In Progress (WIP)

Carhartt is a workwear apparel brand that was founded in 1889. On the centenary of the company’s founding, Work In Progress (WIP) Carhartt’s streetwear version, was launched. The first store was opened on Neal Street in London in 1997. However, it wasn’t until 2012 when Carhartt WIP started developing a UK retail network, with the opening of their store in Shoreditch. The following year they opened in the Northern Quarter in Manchester, then in 2014 a store in Bristol and two more sites in London. In 2017 they opened another site in by London’s Kings Cross and a second in the Northern Quarter of Manchester last year.

Although they have a relatively small network, the brand has witnessed phenomenal growth and has become a key streetwear fashion retailer in the UK and internationally. Their successful growth has been aided not only by their own stores, but have also been driven by their wholesale network, as their products are sold in array of shops including Urban Outfitters and John Lewis.

Peloton Interactive

Peloton Interactive, famous for their stationary bikes and interactive classes, sold their first bike in the US in 2013. In 2018, they announced plans to expand beyond the US to Canada and the UK. In 2019 they opened three UK stores, in Covent Garden, Bluewater, and Leeds.

Following the first Covid-19 lockdown, in August 2020, they opened seven concessions in John Lewis stores. Four of these were located in London and the South East, with the other three being in Manchester, Liverpool, and Bristol. They also opened their first Scottish store in Glasgow in October 2020. The following year they opened 3 more stores, including another in London, Bath, and Edinburgh, as well as 5 more concessions in John Lewis stores around the country. The last store they opened was in John Lewis in Milton Keynes in January 2022.

Their rapid expansion corresponds with the spike in popularity of the brand. This occurred around the time they came across to the UK, and during the Covid-19 pandemic– whereby people were looking for ways to exercise in their homes. Their location strategy has enabled them to have presence up and down the country. However, the question remains whether their growth was sustainable or does their luxury product have a smaller audience when people are no longer confined to their homes?

Lululemon Atheletica

Lululemon Althlethica inc. is a Canadian athletic apparel retailer specialising in yoga wear. Lululemon opened its first store in Vancouver in 2000. Today, they have around 570 stores internationally. In June 2013, they opened their first UK store in Westfield London. The following year, they opened their first European flagship store in London’s Covent Garden, and a store in Edinburgh later that year.

In 2015 and 2016, they opened four own stores in London, as well as a concession in Harrods. In 2017, they opened on Regent Street in London, Bicester Village near Oxford and Guildford. In 2018, they opened a concession in Selfridges London, followed by a store in Manchester’s city centre. They opened a second site in Manchester in Selfridges in the Trafford Centre the following year, followed by stores in Glasgow and London’s Canary Wharf. Since June 2020, they have opened stores in Bath, Cheshire Oaks, Cambridge, Brighton, and in the new Battersea Power Station retail development – as well as a concession in Fenwick in Newcastle.

Whilst in the early years, with the exception of Edinburgh, their growth was concentrated more to the South East, they now have a network covering a large portion of the national population. It will be interesting to see where they go to next.

Free People

Apparel retailer Free People is part of the Urban Outfitters, Inc. group, the first boutique opened in 2002 in the US. In January 2019, Free People opened their first store in the UK in London’s Covent Garden, followed by a second on the Kings Road in March 2019. They opened four more stores in London between 2020 and 2022. In January of this year, they opened their first site outside of London in Guilford, and another most recently in Cambridge.

Free People’s growth strategy so far has been very London centric; however, will their recent Guilford and Cambridge openings indicate they are looking to slowly expand across the nation?

Monki

Monki opened their first store in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2006. In 2008, they joined the H&M Group, and have since grown their portfolio across Europe and Asia to 17 markets. They opened their first store in the UK on Carnaby Street in London in February 2012. Their second UK store, in Bristol, wasn’t opened for another 4 years.

Since, they have opened stores in London’s Westfield Stratford, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and Sheffield. With only two out of eight stores being in London, they are definitely not a London-only brand. Their growth strategy appears to target key UK student cities, which corresponds with one of the brands target consumers.

They haven’t opened any new stores since November 2019. This coincides with the H&M Group’s shift of concentration from growth, to focus on optimising their store networks. We shall have to wait to see whether they continue to invest in their store network, and whether they will continue targeting cities outside of London.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Our Thoughts: Did these brands have a London-first approach to their UK location strategies?

Each of these brands opened their first UK store in London, with the exception of Nespresso which first opened in Manchester. When looking beyond London, the cities that were popular cities to go next were Manchester, Edinburgh, and Bristol. This was followed by other regional cities including Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, Belfast, and Newcastle. Destinations in proximity to London, such as Guildford, Bluewater, Cambridge and Milton Keynes, were also popular.

Opening in a nation’s capital has its benefits, London being no exception. You immediately have access to a vast catchment, a high tourist population, key retail destinations, and operational advantages such as access to ports or airports. Furthermore, a brands concentration of its first few openings to one city has operational advantages. For example, a brands stores can share warehouses, transportation costs, and even resources such as store management.

However, brands must consider that over saturation in one city does pose a risk of cannibalising on their own store revenues; one store can steal customers from another due to overlapping catchments and therefore become inefficient. There is also a risk you are limiting your brand awareness to one part of the country, and missing huge opportunity in places where there could be large untapped customer demand – without such expensive unit rental leases.

Conclusion

As you can see no brand is the same, and each has to carefully consider their location strategy depending what their business looks like. For example: who is their target audience; what are their business objectives; and how strong is their brand attractiveness? This is why location planning and data-driven location intelligence is crucial to ensure a brand makes the right investments.

To find out more about GMAP’s intelligence data and software products, or our location planning consultancy services – get in touch at info@gmap.com .

The Continued Growth of the UK Leisure Landscape

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 09:40:11 GMT

The Continued Growth of the UK Leisure Landscape

30th March 2023

Exploring the Continued Growth of the UK Leisure Landscape

In the past decade, leisure-based consumption has increasingly taken up a larger proportion of household spending in the UK. In 2021, we launched our first Leisure location intelligence data proposition, LeisureVision , as we were witnessing increased demand from leisure-operators and retailers that wanted to observe how leisure sits in parallel to their estates. Two years on, and the growth and focus on the leisure sector doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Keep reading on to discover the recent leisure trends, drawn from our LeisureVision product, and some key brands to watch out of in the UK leisure market!

Background: How Retail Decline Carved a Hole for the Leisure Operators to Fill

At the start of the millennium, retail destinations with the occasional meal or cinema trip were the epicentre of a day out. Whereas now, leisure is often the driver of the trip out. Prior to the pandemic we were in the midst of a “Retail Apocalypse”, which was exasperated when retailers were forced to close their doors as Covid-19 hit. During this period online shopping became ever more vital, general retail spending pivoted towards Grocery and Homeware sectors, with some exceptions of the more obscure lockdown-centric trends that emerged – e.g. loungewear, hot tubs and Peloton bikes.

Ultimately, general high street retail suffered. This was exemplified by the loss of the Acadia Group brands in the first quarter of 2021 when they went into administration. This combined with further losses since the pandemic, such as with the decline of department stores, including the likes of Debenhams, have left large, ‘leisure size’ floorspace holes in our high streets.

2 Years On: The Continued Growth in Leisure

Since we launched our LeisureVision data product, Leisure has sustained growth. Between the latest release of LeisureVision in H1 2023 and the prior release in H2 2022, there has been an overall 2% increase in LeisureVision Points in this 6-month period.

Entertainment locations have witnessed the highest growth of 3.1%, followed by Food & Beverage with 2.1%, Sports & Fitness with 1.9% and Competitive Socialising with 0.8%.

How the UK Leisure Market has Sustained Continued Growth

Despite the ongoing cost-of-living crisis we are currently facing, eating out and leisure-based experiences with friends and family, outside of the home, have remained a priority for many. In February 2023, The Guardian reported that “UK households ordered 12% less takeaway food in January than a year before”. Perhaps, after a few years of dining-in and Zoom-based socialising, UK households are not yet willing to return to hibernating on their sofas! Are those that are feeling the squeeze of the current economic environment, prioritising spending on leisure-based consumption rather than retail goods? Furthermore, perhaps leisure-operators that were forced to take precautions during the Covid years, and avoided opening new sites during such uncertain times, are beginning to focus more on their estates.

7 Growing Leisure Brands to Watch Out For

From LeisureVision, we have identified 7 growing leisure-that are defying odds even during economic turbulence:

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

Lane7

Lane7 currently has 11 venues in 11 different cities! With sites in Manchester, Sheffield, Durham, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leicester, Aberdeen, Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bath, it is great to see such a widespread network for this fast growing competitive socialising brand! With 5 more venues to “Bowl, Play, Feast and Drink” on the way, including in London and Dublin, we look forward to seeing how this bran d continue their growth.

CLUB 3000 BINGO

Club 3000 Bingo is the 3rd largest bingo chain, and the largest independent bingo club operator in the UK. Having started from 1 site in 2006, they now have 22 sites across the UK and one more set to open in Blackpool this year. Their innovative approach to new sites, focused on new purpose-built flat-floor sites, makes them stand out from the bingo clubs that historically opened in converted cinemas.

CROSSTOWN DOUGHNUTS

From a market stall in 2014, Crosstown has come a long way with 16 locations that continue to offer doughnuts of the highest quality – fresh and hand-rolled daily! With 11 London Stores and 4 Regional Stores, as well as trucks, market stalls, Scoop Bars, concessions, and stockists such as Liberty London and Whole Foods – its safe to say Crosstown is enroute to success.

PIZZA PILGRIMS

Pizza Pilgrims, launched with just two credit cards and a van by two brothers, opening their first pizzeria in 2013. They were scouted by a landlord to open in Carnaby Street’s infamous Kingly Court, which provided an incubator for the brand’s growth. Their lockdown “Pizza in the Post” has also been a big driver of their UK growth and has continued post-lockdown. With over 20 locations, they are now targeting their expansion outside of London!

ATTENDANT COFFEE ROASTERS

Attendant Coffee Roasters have a less conventional attitude to site acquisitions, with their first location which opened in 2013 being in a disused Victorian toilet in Fitzrovia! The focus of Attendant is trying to get people out of their normal routine to refuel, and focus on creating a unique experience in each store. They now have 5 sites across London, each telling a unique story all the while serving great coffee and food!

HERBIES PIZZA

Herbies Pizza is not necessarily a new brand; they have been established for over 20 years offering delicious fresh pizza takeaways. They have grown in a relatively short period of time into a franchise network of 22 sites in the UK, mainly located in the South-East. It will be interesting to see how Herbies Pizza’s franchise network continues to grow.

BOB & BERTS

Bob & Berts started serving coffee in Portstewart in Northern Ireland in 2013, and have since opened in more outlets in Northern Ireland, followed by Scotland, and have more recently started opening in England. As opposed to many chains, they have concentrated their growth on towns, rather than cities. With 25 sites, they have come a long way in the past 10 years and it will be interesting to see their continued growth strategy.

What is LeisureVision?

Our LeisureVision is the source of all of this interesting data. LeisureVision is made up of LeisureVision Points (location data of leisure operators) and LeisureVision Destinations provision which is:

Designed to help stakeholders understand the current leisure landscape to enable smarter location and business decisions.

LeisureVision Points is a competitively price dataset of over 250,000+ leisure locations across the UK. Points is a comprehensive dataset of locations across 4 product types including Food & Beverage (F&B), Entertainment, Competitive Socialising and Sport & Fitness. Each Point is also assigned to one of over 100+ categories. The attributes associated with each point are: Name, Brand, Location, Product & Category.

LeisureVision Destinations is built using a hexagon geography. Destinations include a count of the Points within the hexagon’s geofence, and an Opportunity Score which facilitates ‘next best’ location analysis.

Applications of LeisureVision

LeisureVision location intelligence can be used to help leisure operators, or any stakeholder that requires an understanding of the leisure market, to make informed decisions and meet the business requirements of their proposition. Here are some examples of how LeisureVision can be used:

Rank the Opportunity for Leisure activities around the UK.
Objectively support business decisions and site feasibility assessments.
Benchmark your locations against affinity or competitor brands.
Site performance analysis across your portfolio.
Add additional context to the to the drivers of footfall.

LeisureVision can be delivered as a standalone dataset, as part of a consultative project, or can be further brought to life through our MVPLUS mapping tool.

Applications of LeisureVision

Key decision makers across multiple functions of different types of organisations, including; insight, marketing, property acquisitions, estate management, or location planning teams could benefit from using LeisureVision.

LeisureVision is applicable to many sectors, including, but not limited to:

Retailers
Food & Beverage Operators
Sport & Fitness Brands
Leisure-Based Retailers
Town Planners
Property Developers
Transport Operators
Marketing Agencies
Consultancies

Get In Touch

To find out more about how LeisureVision can insure you make location intelligent decisions , get in touch at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585 .

How IMPACT by GMAP Can Inform Your Location Planning Decisions

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 10:45:09 GMT

How IMPACT by GMAP Can Inform Your Location Planning Decisions

16th March 2023

What is IMPACT?

IMPACT is our latest location intelligence tool at GMAP! We have developed this tool to allow our clients to create and run network strategy simulations in-house following a location planning project.

IMPACT is an online web application which can be deployed globally and can run multi-action scenarios whereby numerous openings and closures can be modelled within the same scenario. Scenario results are calculated within minutes and are displayed in a report, which users can interact with or export as an image. This allows the modelled results to be imported into proposals, reports or presentations as required. Scenarios are automatically saved, so can be revisited later.

Why Have GMAP Developed IMPACT?

In a location planning project , GMAP calibrate a client-specific Spatial Interaction Model (SIM) working collaboratively with our clients to ensure the model is forecasting reliable sales forecasts. At the end of a project, we produce a recommended network, which we call an “Ideal Network Plan”. A project delivery typically provides recommendations or a target list as to where to locate new sites, where to close existing sites, and where to relocate under-performing sites. This often includes sales estimates amongst other variables.

Whilst we have produced 000s of network plans to support many clients across multiple sectors over the past 30 years, we wanted to develop an easy-to-use, self-serve tool that supports our clients as they roll out their location planning strategies and ensures they make informed and objective decisions!

Which Location Planning Problems Can IMPACT Support You With?

IMPACT can be used to assess the pay-off of opening a new site, as well as the impact of closing or relocating an existing site. It can also run multi-action scenarios if you have several site openings or closures. For each of these scenarios, you can answer multiple questions within a few minutes:

1. Opening a new site

What new sales would you gain?
What sales would you cannibalise from neighbouring sites?
How would the new site increase your network sales overall

2. Closing an existing site

What sales would you lose?
What sales would be re-distributed to neighbouring sites?
How much would the loss of this site affect the sales of your network overall?

3. Relocating an existing site

Would you increase your sales?
You would cannibalise on any of your neighbouring sites?
How would the new site location increase or decrease your overall network sales?

4. Competitor Activity

How will a competitor opening in the vicinity to your site affect your store performance?
How will a competitor closing a site near to yours impact your sales?

Is IMPACT Relevant to Your Business?

No matter your sector, IMPACT could be relevant to you. Read the following case studies to see how IMPACT has helped clients across different sectors:

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

IMPACT for an International

Automotive Group

Enabling an international Automotive Group to self-serve scenarios to support them in optimising their dealer network >>

IMPACT for an International Clothing & Footwear Retailer

Supporting the site selection process for a Clothing & Footwear Retailer expanding their retail network internationally >>

Whilst GMAP are leaders in location planning for the automotive and retail sectors, we also specialise in a wide variety of different sectors including Leisure, Fuel Forecourt and Transport. If your retail operations consist of any physical customer-facing sites, our location intelligence expertise can help you!

Could IMPACT Support Your Team?

IMPACT could be used by sponsors across different areas of your business. For example, IMPACT could be used day to day by Network Planning Analysts to Acquisition Managers , to Insight Analysts , to Directors or those at Board-level who oversee large investment decisions . IMPACT is hosted through an online secure web-app, which means your team can login anywhere from an internet browser – no desktop applications required!

The Benefits of IMPACT Location Intelligence

There are many benefits that IMPACT could provide you with, including:

1. Objectivity and Consistency

IMPACT provides an objective measure and consistent approach for site feasibility. For example, a commercial property agent comes to you with 10 potential new sites. Yes, gut and feel might tell you one site is “the one”. However, where are the numbers? Is it based solely on the shops in the vicinity, or that the local population has a high rate of your target audience? With IMPACT, you could take these factors into account, but also many others depending what is built into your model. You could then add each of these sites in as individual scenarios.

From this, you could take images out of the IMPACT Report which present the sales estimate for each site, as well as the sales impact to your overall network. You could show this in a meeting with your Board to justify your decision to open the store. In GMAP’s experience, we have found our clients reap great rewards from presenting objective sales estimates in a consistent way and IMPACT is a great way to help you do that!

2. Quantifying Impact

Obtaining an estimate of sales impact of a potential new site, closing a site or a new competitor’s site can be hard to obtain without using a model. Whilst you could say a new site looks like another one of your existing ones and therefore you could expect to perform in a similar way, there will always be differentiations in the catchment population or competitive mix or attractiveness of a destination that will affect your site performance. Furthermore, how would you quantify how individual sites would impact on each other, or how a competitor would impact your sites? IMPACT does all this for you in minutes to save you having to make assumptions that can cost you and your investments greatly.

3. Be Reactive

Whilst a network planning project with GMAP can provide you with a ‘roadmap’ for expansion, circumstances can change. You may have to open certain sites earlier than the plan suggests whilst others take longer to build or find the right micro location for, or stores you never anticipated having to close may need to due to sky rocketing rents. IMPACT enables you to intuitively run scenarios without having to even send us an email. Our clients need for reactiveness is exactly why we developed IMPACT, so you can quickly get the numbers you need to make your decisions.

4. Easy-to-Use

A key criterion in the development of IMPACT was ease-of-use. We wanted IMPACT to be intuitive and simple to run scenarios on to ensure any user could quickly start using IMPACT without having to undergo much training. This way, the tool can be picked up for use whenever it is needed without causing resource issues for our clients.

5. GMAP Support

GMAP are always only a phone call or email away! We promise, you’ve not met a helpdesk more helpful than GMAP’s.

Get In Touch

If you are interested in IMPACT or would like a quick demo to see whether this is the location planning tool you are missing, get in touch at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585 .

GMAP’s Culture: The Fundamental Reason We Love Working for GMAP

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 17:42:05 GMT

GMAP’s Culture: The Fundamental Reason We Love Working for GMAP

1st March 2023

GMAP’s Culture: The Fundamental Reason We Love Working for GMAP

The GMAP culture is a key part of why we have been successful in providing location intelligence data, software and consultancy for our clients, and why so many of our employees are long serving members.

The Average Length of Service in GMAP is 14 years!

We strongly believe that it is the culture at GMAP that has resulted in the longevity of so many of our employees. It is incredible that the average length of service of a GMAP employee is 14 years, with one quarter of employees having worked for GMAP for over 25 years! In total, the team have worked in different iterations of the GMAP location planning team for a total of over 165 years.

Though GMAP has changed over the years, with its different ownership and focus, one thing our long-standing employees can vouch for is that the fundamental culture of working for GMAP has remained constant, it is deeply founded, and it remains something we are proud of.

GMAP’s Culture is about Making People Happy, Being Helpful, and Rolling Up Our Sleeves

To us GMAP’s culture is about making people happy, being helpful, and rolling our sleeves up to support our clients to answer their business problems. It’s about growing people and empowering all members of the team to be autonomous and to have new ideas, while also knowing they can ask for help, and that other members of the team have their back. It’s also about building relationships, not only with clients but with each other, and most importantly it is about making GMAP an enjoyable place to work.

5 Core Values We Follow in Providing Location Intelligence for Our Clients

GMAP’s culture is based on five core values which in themselves define both our relationship with clients and the defining characteristics of a GMAP employee.

Committed - Loyal and reliable, willing to go the extra mile for our clients and each other
Adaptable - Flexible to meet the needs of our clients and the team
Enthusiastic - Keen to both understand and help our clients answer questions
Approachable - Friendly and easy to talk to, pleased to support others
Skilful - Good at what we do, yet curious to learn

These values allow our employees to know what we expect from each other, how clients can expect to work with us and are the basis of how we make decisions.

6 Ways We Maintain GMAP’s Culture

We are passionate about maintaining this culture which is why we:

Trust our employees to work flexibly.
Support time off work with our generous holiday allowance.
Let individuals carve their own career paths within GMAP.
Encourage members to be part of strategic growth planning.
Support the development of new skills to assist in the development of our employees, as well as our products and services.
Ensure we also make time to enjoy each other’s company, whether that be through volunteering days together, or regular team meals out.

About GMAP

For over 30 years, GMAP’s location intelligence and customer targeting solutions have empowered clients across multiple sectors, including retail & automotive, to make profitable and future-proof investment decisions in over 60 countries. Find out more about GMAP .

GMAP’s location intelligence data and software products enable you to conduct in-house spatial analysis, whilst our location planning consultancy can inform your network planning strategy. Whether you are looking to self-serve or a network plan to grow, optimise or rationalise your network, GMAP can support you with:

GMAP’s Location Intelligence & Location Planning Solutions

At GMAP, we provide data, software products, and consultancy services, that can support your location intelligence. Found out more about our location intelligence data & software solutions, or location planning consultancy .

Location Intelligence Data – we provide a number of datasets that can enable you to conduct your in-house analysis. For example, use RetailVision Centre-level Revenue Data , the Geodemographic Data , or the DVLA Dataset in combination with your existing data.
Location Intelligence Software – our various in-house tools can enable you to self-serve your spatial analysis and location planning.

There is a wealth of insight you can obtain using MVPLUS , e.g. you can use Geodemographic Data to run quick customer profile reports, create bespoke drive time catchments around your sites, or tag potential new sites with RetailVision Data to compare Centre Revenues.
IMPACT allows you to interact with a model calibrated for you to estimate the potential impact of: opening a new site, relocating a site, closing a site, or a competitor opening a site in the vicinity of one of your locations.

Location Planning Consultancy – our consultancy team can run retail network planning projects to provide you with a strategy for growth, optimisation, or rationalisation. Such projects are not just limited to traditional retail, we also provide network plans to automotive groups, leisure operators and service retailers such as health & beauty clinics.

Get In Touch

To learn more about GMAP or our location intelligence data, software, and consultancy services, get in touch at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585 .

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

65% of UK Shopping Centres Have No Electric Car Charging

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 17:34:35 GMT

Spotlight: 65% of UK Shopping Centres Have No Electric Car Charging

15th February 2023

Is There A Lack of Public Charging Infrastructure Development Compared to Electric Vehicle Sales?

At GMAP, we work with a number of businesses in the Electric Vehicle industry. There is a growing amount of interest in Plug-In Hybrids (PHEVs) and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), which has increased with the UK’s Government incentive schemes and the announcement that the sale of new Petrol and Diesel vehicles is due to be outlawed by 2030. This is being shown in our vehicle registrations data; read our blog post on how the Q3 2022 DVLA data determined “One in Five New Cars Sold is a Battery Electric Vehicle” .

Whilst many Electric Vehicle owners will charge their vehicles at home, there is also a growing demand for public electric charging infrastructure. Public charging can be viewed in two main ways:

Rapid Charging: for example, at a motorway service station, to get you back on your journey as quicky as possible.
Destination Charging: for example, at your place of work or a shopping centre. This type of charging can be much slower due to a much longer dwell time.

There has been widespread concern over the lack of public charging infrastructure development compared to the growth of Electric Vehicle sales, and it does seem that Electric Vehicle registrations are constantly outpacing the required infrastructure.

Investigating Electric Car Charging Provision Around UK Retail Centres with RetailVision

To explore this concern over the lack of charging infrastructure, at GMAP we investigated what portion of the UK’s retail destinations had electric car charging provision using our RetailVision product. RetailVision provides a detailed illustration of the UK’s retail landscape with approximately 21,000 Retail Centres. Each Retail Centre is assigned a Centre Type.

Using the centroids of the RetailVision Retail Centres, we created 200m straight-line catchments around the Retail Centres and overlayed public charging point locations to observe the charging provision in the local vicinity of the Retail Centres. We then compared this by Retail Centre Type to further analyse charging infrastructure.

Less Than 40% of all UK Retail Centres Have Any Electric Car Charging Provision

The four main Retail Centre Types where we would expect to find Destination Charging are: Shopping Districts, Retail Parks, Shopping Centres and Factory Outlets. These are all ideal places for charging points due to the long dwell time that consumers and their vehicles spend at these destinations. They are well suited for slow and medium capacity charging.

Of these, 36% of Shopping Districts , 36% of Shopping Centres and 37% of Factory Outlets all had charging facilities within 200m . Retail Parks had the lowest charging point provision, with only around 28% of them having charging within 200m.

In total, less than 40% of all UK Retail Centres had any electric car charging provision ! This is staggering given that 1 in 5 new cars are Battery Electric Vehicles. The growing number of Electric Vehicles on UK roads will mean that this number will have to increase very quickly to be able to ensure sufficient destination charging supply.

Beyond Provision: The Volume of Chargers

It is important to consider it is not only the presence of charging that is important, but also the number of charging connectors. In an ideal scenario you would want to have free availability of charging points when arriving at a destination, rather than having to wait for a vehicle to move on that has potentially been there for an extended period of time. It will be interesting to see how UK Retail catches up with the demand and increase their volume of chargers!

What is RetailVision?

At GMAP, we specialise in providing objective ways to help clients across several sectors to make location planning decisions. This includes a host of location intelligence data products that provide location intelligence; including our RetailVision product.

RetailVision location intelligence data provides stakeholders with a comprehensive depiction of the UK retail landscape. This includes store locations with coverage of over 80,000 stores for over 800 brands in 27 categories, and 21,000 Retail Centres. Retail Centres are then aggregated into 13,000 Trade Zones, and further grouped in 800 Super Trade Zones to allow for macro-level comparisons.

Location Intelligence with RetailVision

For each Retail Centre, a variety of attributes are available which can allow you to compare UK retail destinations:

Each Retail Centre is classified by a Type , e.g. Arcade, Shopping District, Retail Park

Centres are segmented into 5 Categories : Premium, Mass+, Mass, Value+, and Value

Centre Revenues – GMAP’s model simulates Bricks & Mortar Spend, which estimates Retail Centre Revenue to each Retail Centre by 4 product types: Grocery, Fashion & Comparison, Homeware & DIY, and Electrical. Revenues of different Centres can then be compared, by total Centre Revenue or by product type. Centres are then Ranked by Revenue – which is how we established the top 10 Retail Centres in the UK!

Quarterly Geomobility indexes can help you to see how Centre footfall varies across different Centres, as well across time.

Centre Footfall Catchments allow you to understand the distance travelled to a Centre, and therefore its ‘attractiveness’, as well as the catchment population.

Such Location Intelligence can support you in your business decision making, such as in making Location Planning Decisions.

How Can RetailVision Support Your Location Planning Decisions?

RetailVision Insight can be used for:

Retail Location Planning – develop comprehensive estate strategies, such as tactics for expansion or rationalisation.

Monitoring market share performance – how is your brand operating compared to the rest of the market?

Benchmarking competitor brands – what are the location strategies of your competitor or affinity brands compared to your own? E.g., what type of Retail Centres are they in?

Site Feasibility Assessments - quantify and rank the size of the revenue opportunity of a Retail Centre when provided with lease opportunities from commercial property agents.

Location Intelligence on the UK Vehicle Market with DVLA Data

As well as RetailVision, GMAP hold other data products that can support your location intelligence. One of these datasets includes DVLA Data which can enable you to gain insight in the UK vehicle market including Battery Electric Vehicles.

Get In Touch

If you would like to learn more about our RetailVision product or how you could gain insight into the UK vehicle market including Battery Electric Vehicles using the DVLA Data then please get in touch at info@gmap.com !

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

What are the UK’s Top 10 Retail Centres?

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 08:44:37 GMT

What are the UK’s Top 10 Retail Centres?

2nd February 2023

The Top 10 Retail Centres in the UK, by RetailVision Centre Revenue

At GMAP, we have used our RetailVision dataset to establish the Top 10 Retail Centres in the UK at the start of 2023, based on Centre Revenue Estimates!

The UK’s Top 10 Retail Centres:

Oxford Street
West Brompton, Knightsbridge
Carnaby Street
Manchester Shopping District
The Trafford Centre
Glasgow Shopping District
Bluewater
Liverpool One
Covent Garden
Westfield London

We have created a report, which you can download below, outlining some of the key attributes of each of the top 10 Centres. For every Centre, you can visualise and compare the following variables:

Centre Total Rank – Retail Centre Rank Overall within the UK by Revenue
Centre Type – Retail Centre Type (e.g. Arcade/Parade, Shopping Centre, etc.)
Trade Zone – Retail Trade Zone name the Retail Centre is located in
Trade Zone Rank – Trade Zone Rank overall within the UK
Super Trade Zone – Retail Super Trade Zone name the Centre is located in
Super Trade Zone Rank – Super Trade Zone Rank Overall within the UK
Estimated Annual Revenue – Retail Centre Total Revenue (£) for all products
Centre PMV+ Status – Proportion of Retail Points by PMV by Retail Centre vs. the national proportion of Retail Points by PMV
Fashion & Comp Centre Rank – Retail Centre Rank for Fashion & Comparison within the UK by Revenue
Centre Catchment Population – Population within the Retail Centre Catchment
Centre Footfall Rank – Retail Centre Rank based on the Footfall Index
Visitor Travel Distance – The range of the maximum distance (km) travelled to the Retail Centre by 60% of the people that visited the centre
Revenue Split by Product Type – Proportion of Revenue by each Product
# Store Split by PMV+ Status – Count of Retail Points by PMV+ Status (Value, Value+, Mass, Mass+, Premium)
# Store Split by Category Type – Count of Retail Points by Category Type

RetailVision Estimates the Top Retail Centre in the UK is: Oxford Street

A surprise? Probably not. However, given the turmoil the retail industry has faced the past few years we are glad to see that the UK’s top retail tourist destination remains on top! In 2019, we were witnessing a “retail apocalypse” with headlines of “Death on the High Street” becoming commonplace as physical stores had been closing increasingly year on year for a decade (read our whitepaper on “ Let’s Get Digital But Stay Physical: Surviving the Retail Apocalypse ”).

This was only exasperated by the Covid-19 pandemic in which temporary physical store closures meant footfall and sales were hard hit, only leading to the closure of more stores and further brand collapses. Oxford Street’s notorious Topshop flagship was one such casualty, which was closed after Phillip Green’s Arcadia Group went into administration in 2021.

Nevertheless, almost three years on since Covid-19 caused our stores to close, international tourism to be grounded, and homes to become workplaces, Oxford Street has the highest Retail Centre Revenue, with estimated spend of £946million. Furthermore, it is the top Fashion & Comparison Centre in the UK, with a high volume of Mass and Mass+ stores. It has the 5th highest Footfall in the UK, and shoppers travel from a vast distance to visit this key retail destination. 3.2million people live in the Catchment of the Oxford Street Retail Centre.

2 ^nd Top UK Retail Centre: West Brompton, Knightsbridge

Knightsbridge has the 2nd highest Retail Centre Revenue in the UK, and also ranks 2nd for Fashion & Comparison in the UK. Home to Harrods, amongst many other Premium stores, this Centre has no Value or Value+ brands! Whilst not of all Harrod’s tourist Footfall traffic will be contributing to the Revenue, it is clear not everyone visiting this Centre is just window shopping…

3 ^rd Top UK Retail Centre: Carnaby Street

Clearly, Carnaby Street’s heyday isn’t over as it ranked as the 3rd Retail Centre in the UK! Neighbouring Oxford Street, the Centre attracts people from a vast distance. The mix of retail and leisure operators in and around Carnaby Street, including Kings Court, as well as Liberty’s means Carnaby Street remains a key UK shopping district.

4 ^th Top UK Retail Centre: Manchester Shopping District

Next stop, we head North to Manchester! Manchester Shopping District ranks 4th for Retail Centre Revenue, and 5th for Fashion & Comparison. Visitors travel far to this key city centre retail destination. The Centre Catchment is home to a population of 2.1million. There is a mix of store types, with a high presence of Mass stores.

5 ^th Top UK Retail Centre: The Trafford Centre

The Trafford Centre, on the outskirts of Manchester, is the 5th ranking Retail Centre, and 4th destination for Fashion & Comparison.

6 ^th Top UK Re tail Centre: Glasgow Shopping District

Going further north to Scotland, the Glasgow Shopping District is the 6th ranking Retail Centre, and 8th Fashion & Comparison Centre.

7 ^th Top UK Retail Centre: Bluewater

Back down to the south of England, Bluewater is the 7th Retail Centre, and this out-of-town shopping destination also ranks 3rd for Fashion & Comparison with a high volume and revenue split for this product type!

8 ^th Top UK Retail Centre: Liverpool One

Liverpool One, in the heart of Liverpool’s city centre, is the 8th top Retail Centre in the UK.

9 ^th Top UK Retail Centre: Covent Garden

Another key London tourist destination ranks in the top 10: Covent Garden ranks 9th with a Revenue Estimate of £598M.

10 ^th Top UK Retail Centre: Westfield London

Finally, in 10th place, we have the notorious Westfield London in Shepherd’s Bush!

What Do the Top 10 Retail Centres Have in Common?

The top 10 Retail Centres all had:

A Revenue Estimate over £500M

PMV+ Status of Mass+

Ranks in the top 1% of Centres for Fashion & Comparison Revenue

Centre Catchment Populations over 450K

Fashion as the Category with the highest number of stores

What is RetailVision?

At GMAP, we specialise in providing objective ways to help clients across several sectors to make location planning decisions. This includes a host of data products that provide location intelligence; including our RetailVision product.

Location Intelligence with RetailVision

For each Retail Centre, a variety of attributes are available which can allow you to compare UK retail destinations:

Each Retail Centre is classified by a Type , e.g. Arcade, Shopping District, Retail Park

Centres are segmented into 5 Categories : Premium, Mass+, Mass, Value+, and Value

Centre Revenues – GMAP’s model simulates Bricks & Mortar Spend, which estimates Retail Centre Revenue to each Retail Centre by 4 product types: Grocery, Fashion & Comparison, Homeware & DIY, and Electrical. Revenues of different Centres can then be compared, by total Centre Revenue or by product type. Centres are then Ranked by Revenue – which is how we established the top 10 Retail Centres in the UK!

Quarterly Geomobility indexes can help you to see how Centre footfall varies across different Centres, as well across time.

Centre Footfall Catchments allow you to understand the distance travelled to a Centre, and therefore its ‘attractiveness’, as well as the catchment population.

Such Location Intelligence can support you in your business decision making, such as in making Location Planning Decisions.

How Can RetailVision Support Your Location Planning Decisions?

RetailVision Insight can be used for:

Retail Location Planning – develop comprehensive estate strategies, such as tactics for expansion or rationalisation.

Monitoring market share performance – how is your brand operating compared to the rest of the market?

Benchmarking competitor brands – what are the location strategies of your competitor or affinity brands compared to your own? E.g., what type of Retail Centres are they in?

Site Feasibility Assessments - quantify and rank the size of the revenue opportunity of a Retail Centre when provided with lease opportunities from commercial property agents.

How Can GMAP Support Your Location Intelligence?

As well as RetailVision, GMAP hold other data products that can support your location intelligence. Some of these datasets include:

Geodemographic data

LeisureVision

DVLA Data

GMAP also provide location intelligence software tools that enable clients to conduct in-house spatial analysis. MVPLUS is our off-the-shelf location intelligence tool and location planning software. In addition to this, we have experience building more bespoke location intelligence tools to suit individual clients. These solutions can often allow users to work with their own data or licensed datasets. They can cut, manipulate and overlay datasets and view them spatially on a map. If you are serious about location intelligence, finding and using the right tools is key.

Get In Touch

To learn about RetailVision, and how our location intelligence data and software could support you, get in touch at info@gmap.com !

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

GMAP: Wrapping Up 2022 & Looking To 2023

info@gmap.com (Alice Goddard) — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 12:53:18 GMT

GMAP: Wrapping Up 2022 & Looking To 2023

20th December 2022

GMAP: Wrapping Up 2022 & Looking To 2023

Throughout 2022, GMAP has continued to focus on providing location planning consultancy support, as well as location intelligence data and software, to our clients both old and new!

GMAP have continued to provide location intelligence not only in the UK, but also globally. We have worked on retail network planning projects, as well as provided data and self-serve software, for clients across multiple sectors in several markets including but not limited to Australia, Greece, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Turkey, and the USA.

The GMAP Team in 2022

As 2022 comes to an end and we reflect on the year, there is no doubt GMAP has had a successful 3rd year operating as an independent company. In contrast to the past couple of years, we have been regularly going to our office in Nexus Leeds and travelled all over to visit our clients! But perhaps our most exciting milestone being that, in November, we started looking for new talent to join the GMAP Team! Below we have summarised some of GMAP’s highlights of 2022:

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

In May we celebrated our 3rd birthday since our MBO in May 2019 when GMAP once again became an independent company.

This year, we have been able to continue attending in-person events! In May, we attended the Spatial Data Science Conference.

In July we had our Summer Party.

In September, some of the GMAP Team completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in around 11 hours raising £1,510 for Leeds-based charity Simon on the Streets. Simon on the Streets support the homeless and vulnerable in Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield, and we hope this money can help them continue the incredible work they do. Read our blog to find all about the money we raised for Simon on the Streets.

We had our annual volunteering day in October, where we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

We had our annual volunteering day in October, were we helped to revamp the play area of a local outdoor activity centre in Ilkley.

This month, we had our Christmas party in Leeds and celebrated the end of another great year for GMAP!

This year we have continued to receive great feedback from the clients for our location planning and location intelligence services! Here is one kind testimonial we received from a client:

GMAP’s Location Intelligence Insights in 2022

At GMAP, we have a host of data products that are regularly updated and provide some interesting insights, which we have shared throughout the year. Here are some of our favourite insights from 2022.

In May we used our DVLA Vehicle Registrations data set to investigate how New and Used Car Transactions have changed across the last 5 years . Watch the video below which shows that propulsion types have changed in the past few years with the growth of Battery Electric Vehicles:

For some members of GMAP, Eurovision is one of the most important events of the year. We did some analysis on the rankings that each country has given to another over the years compared to the average to make some predictions on who was going to with Eurovision 2022! Read our Analysing Eurovision 2022 blog.

Eight towns were given city status in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June. We did some analysis using our RetailVision and LeisureVision datasets to see what the retail and leisure proposition in these new cities looked like. We determined that Milton Keynes currently has the biggest retail and leisure offerings, but it will be interesting to see how this changes with their new city statuses!

To celebrate the start of Wimbledon in July, we used our LeisureVision location data in our MVPLUS location intelligence software to analyse where the UK tennis hotspot is in relation to population and wealth. We determined what has often been speculated, that there was a spatial correlation between tennis provision and affluence and perhaps even a north/south divide within Tennis. Read our blog Exploring Where has the Highest Tennis Provision in the UK .

Using the drive time capabilities in our MVPLUS mapping tool , we calculated average employee drive time to our Leeds office! On average, the GMAP team live 34 minutes or 43km from our office in Nexus Leeds! This functionality can be used for several analyses, such as learning how far a customer has travelled to a store. Read our blog to learn more .

Looking Forward to 2023

As we look to 2023, we have a lot to look forward to!

Welcoming New GMAPPERs - we look forward to welcoming new GMAPPERs. To find out more about how you could join GMAP, visit our careers page.

New Products & Continued Innovation - Our product team have been busy developing an exciting new product, which we will be sharing in the new year! We also look forward to continuing to innovate and enhance our existing data products and location intelligence tools , as we increase our offering to serve our clients!

Release of the Full 2021 Census Data - How could we not mention, that in 2023 we get to see the full release of the UK Census 2021 data. As much as our clients want it, we also can’t wait to see what insights we can create from this much awaited full Census release! Read our previous blog post to find out more about why we care about the Census and how we provide our clients with easy access to the data in our MVPLUS location intelligence software .

For now though, we would like to wish our clients and friends of GMAP all a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year! We look forward to continuing to provide location intelligence to our current and new clients in 2023.

Get In Touch

If you would be interested in learning more about how you could engage with GMAP next year or if you would like to find out more about our location consultancy services or location intelligence toolkit, please get in touch at info@gmap.com !

How Geodemographics Transform Customer Data Into Location Intelligence Insights

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 14:43:33 GMT

How Geodemographics Transform Customer Data Into Location Intelligence Insights

7th December 2022

Transform Customer Data into Customer Insights with Geodemographic Datasets

Within most consumer facing industries today, having data or ‘Big Data’ is generally an expected given. Data is often seen as an asset. However, un-informed data is only jargon, until it is translated into insight that is applicable to the relevant business environment.

Knowing where your customer lives can be used to drive actionable insights. If you know your customers address or postcode, geodemographic data can be used to discover who your consumers typically are. For example, learn their habits, potential to buy, opinions, attitudes, likes, and dislikes. The better you know your consumers, the better you can attract, engage, satisfy, and retain them.

There are several geodemographic data sources available, and with the release of the 2021 Census data in the next year we expect a host of new products to enter the market. The 2021 Census occurred during one of the Covid-19 lockdown - read our previous blog about the 2021 Census . Therefore, it will be interesting to see how this impacts the quantity and quality of the data, as well as how the pandemic has impacted our lives, in addition to how much we have changed as a nation since the last Census in 2011.

As businesses have tried to adapt to post pandemic world, they have had to respond to changing consumer habits, needs and characteristics. Therefore, the 2021 Census data could provide a key role in understanding the current consumer landscape. The Census data is currently being released in a series of stages throughout 2022 and 2023.

However, access to an extensive array of data is like having the most detailed map and not knowing where you’re trying to get to. The trick is knowing what information and insight you are trying to obtain to get the most out of your data.

" The better you know your consumers, the better you can attract, engage, satisfy, and retain them "

What is Geodemographic Data?

Geodemographic data , also known as consumer segmentations or classifications, are created by grouping demographic and socio-economic characteristics within a specific geography. Variables such as age, gender, education level, income etc., reveal lifestyle segments that provide a description or ‘profile’ of your customers. Additional resources, such as panel survey data, are also often incorporated to enrich the data.

Customer profiles can be applied across multiple business functions, including in marketing, retail planning, and location planning for site selection.

" Geodemographics... reveal lifestyle segments that provide a description or 'profile' of your customers "

Geodemographics in Marketing

Marketers across multiple sectors and industries draw upon geodemographics to understand their customers and their markets. Creating profiles of their most loyal, highest spending, or most active customers enables organisations to look for markets with the same characteristics, or their “look-a-like” customers.

Being able to group and differentiate customer groups using geodemographics can be used to develop campaigns effectively. Messages, proposition and offers can be tailored to appeal specifically to a particular customer segment. For example:

Select postcodes for leaflet distribution
Use drivetimes to select the best and most appropriate outdoor media
Target promotions in the right areas

Such initiatives will ensure that investment is focused on the cohorts that are most likely to respond to a campaign and will therefore deliver return on investment.

Geodemographics in Retail Planning

Retail operations teams can equally benefit from insightful and well curated data sets. Geodemographics can be a powerful tool in ensuring a location performs as best it can. With an understanding of a store’s retail catchment and the type of customers it serves, a business can tailor their products and services to ensure they are relevant and anticipate demand for products and services. Modelling tools allow retailers to predict future trends, so they can adapt their propositions and ranges accordingly.

Geodemographics in Location Planning for Site Selection

Using geodemographics and customer insight to inform your location planning strategy can create high-performing and sustainable store networks. Understanding the population distribution of key customer types is one factor of demand that can help businesses to make objective decisions about site selections.

You can find opportunities in locations with high populations of your key target audience that currently aren’t being served by your offer, or your competitors. These can be analysed in conjunction with other factors, such as footfall or presence of your affinity brands, to determine whether these areas have high potential for a new site opening.

Alternatively, you could determine that the catchment of a current site doesn’t capture the right audience. This may indicate where a relocation could enhance the sites performance, or a site closure might be necessary if it has poor performance, and the catchment is made up of the wrong geodemographic groups.

This insight equips organisations with the information to make strategic decisions for optimal site selection, which can future proof a business. However, to get the right insights, it requires more than just obtaining data sets, but utilising the data in the right way.

" Geodemographics and customer insight... equips organisations with the information to make strategic decisions for optimal site selection "

How to Access Geodemographic data, and Successfully Gain Customer Insight

Once an organisation is clear what it is trying to achieve, it can then begin to consolidate and connect data from different tools and sources to access the insight they require. A key factor to consider is the resource and capabilities available in-house to obtain this insight; as it may take time and if not executed well it could be a wasted investment. If you have the in-house capacity, then location intelligence data including Geodemographic datasets can be delivered as perpetual or licenced data for you to use as required.

Outsourcing your geodemographic analysis by engaging with specialists, can give you access to existing learnings and insight from years of developed expertise and experience. In addition, you could benefit from data sets already curated to the same requirements, and bespoke mining and modelling tools that otherwise would not be accessible.

Third party providers can report back actionable insights. Such exercises can also contribute to longer term initiatives such as location planning consultancy projects. Ultimately, using a specialist location intelligence consultancy can deliver agile more precise results that are successfully communicated and applied, and deliver better returns on investment.

If you are looking for a middle ground between processing raw data in-house and outsourcing as part of a project, there are also some more hybrid solutions which can enable you to draw upon expertise without losing all analytical control. Such solutions can allow you to gain the expertise of a specialist location intelligence consultants but self-serve geodemographic analysis using proprietary tools.

How GMAP's MVPLUS can Derive Location Intelligence Using Geodemographics

MVPLUS is an example of a location intelligence tool that can allow you to self-serve your geodemographic analysis. MVPLUS provides access to array of datasets, include Geodemographics. Furthermore, MVPLUS is a self-serve geographical information system (GIS) that allows the client user to undertake their own analysis to generate greater understanding of spatial relationships between a network or location and its customers.

Within MVPLUS you can use the geodemographic data to:

Upload and tag customers with Geodemographic profiles to know what a customer looks like based on just a postcode
Run a profile report to see what type of customers respond to your offer, compared to the national population
Find new customers by mapping your key target groups by different geographies, such as by Postcode Sectors

CAMEO Geodemographics in MVPLUS

GMAP are resellers of the CAMEO consumer classification , and is the key geodemographic product in MVPLUS. CAMEO is an industry standard Geodemographic product, available in 36 countries. With CAMEO, clients can obtain profiles of their customers, which can be used to apply learnings across multiple markets.

GMAP provide the Location Intelligence Tools, the Expertise, and the Knowhow

Whether your business operates a network of showrooms, forecourts, retail outlets or restaurants, we understand that each organisation has its own goals and nuances, and we tailor our work accordingly. We will draw upon our decades of location planning and location intelligence experience to deliver a bespoke, curated, and scientific outcome.

GMAP Analytics are world-leading providers of innovative geographical analysis and objective location planning consultancy . With over 30 years’ experience and its ground-breaking location planning strategies we have created a market that has become a critical part of business decision-making. Since, GMAP has worked with some of the world’s largest organisations in over 60 countries and is widely recognised as a market leader in location intelligence.

Get In Touch

To learn about how our geodemographic data products and location intelligence software, as well as about our location planning consultancy, get in touch! Email us at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585

Transform Customer Data into Customer Insights with Geodemographic Datasets

" The better you know your consumers, the better you can attract, engage, satisfy, and retain them "

What is Geodemographic Data?

Customer profiles can be applied across multiple business functions, including in marketing, retail planning, and location planning for site selection.

" Geodemographics... reveal lifestyle segments that provide a description or 'profile' of your customers "

Geodemographics in Marketing

Select postcodes for leaflet distribution
Use drivetimes to select the best and most appropriate outdoor media
Target promotions in the right areas

Such initiatives will ensure that investment is focused on the cohorts that are most likely to respond to a campaign and will therefore deliver return on investment.

Geodemographics in Retail Planning

Geodemographics in Location Planning for Site Selection

" Geodemographics and customer insight... equips organisations with the information to make strategic decisions for optimal site selection "

How to Access Geodemographic data, and Successfully Gain Customer Insight

How GMAP's MVPLUS can Derive Location Intelligence Using Geodemographics

Within MVPLUS you can use the geodemographic data to:

Upload and tag customers with Geodemographic profiles to know what a customer looks like based on just a postcode
Run a profile report to see what type of customers respond to your offer, compared to the national population
Find new customers by mapping your key target groups by different geographies, such as by Postcode Sectors

CAMEO Geodemographics in MVPLUS

GMAP provide the Location Intelligence Tools, the Expertise, and the Knowhow

Get In Touch

To learn about how our geodemographic data products and location intelligence software , as well as about our location planning consultancy, get in touch! Email us at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585

Location Intelligence Explained: Why it is Critical for a Business’ Location Planning and Site Selection

Location decisions are a fundamental aspect of successful business planning. “ Location, Location, Location ” expresses the importance of making the right location choice. Location often contributes to the success or failure of a particular site or an entire retail network. To really understand the importance of Location Intelligence it is important to understand what it is and how it can contribute to successful location planning decisions.

" Location often contributes to the success or failure of a particular site or an entire retail network "

Location Intelligence Explained

Location intelligence is the process of obtaining insights from a spatial perspective to inform location decisions. It is derived from the collection and analysis of geographic and geospatial data. Location intelligence often incorporates visual representations of business assets, competitor assets, and customer locations. Using location intelligence, a business can understand the consumer and competitive landscape in a region. From this, informed strategic decision making can occur based on specific consumer needs, assets in the area, and competitor presence.

Using Geodemographic Data for Successful Location Intelligence

The use of data to inform decisions is a key contributor to successful business performance and for location intelligence it is no different. It is key to know just what the right data is accessing this for analysis. Decisions to locate your business come down to accessing the right customers. Therefore, in location planning the assessment of geodemographic data is key. Assess the catchment breakdown, what the profile of your target customers is, and how does it rank versus other potential locations. Often it is not about how good a site is in isolation, but how it compares to other potential new sites.

Geodemographic classifications categorise people into consumer types. Think of geo as the places and demographic as the people. Geodemographic data includes:

Demographic information, including age and ethnicity
Household data and housing characteristics
Socio-economic factors, such as education, car ownership, employment status and economic activity
Additional consumer information. Some geodemographic datasets are also enriched by credit or purchase history data and survey data

Accessing the Right Data for Location Intelligence

Convenience is a crucial factor in location planning decision making. Most location intelligence software will include drive time data to be used as a measure of distance decay. With this insight decision makers can learn:

How far do customers currently travel to your existing sites?
What would be the drive times for your current customers to your proposed locations?
How far away is your proposed location from your nearest competitors?

Understanding and mapping your own and competitor locations is key when making network planning or location planning decisions. Furthermore, drive time analysis can measure the potential impact of adding a new site to your existing network . It can help to assess whether the potential demand you would capture will mitigate the customers you would steal from your other sites? These are just some key factors that can increase the probability of a successful location decision.

Data Without Analysis is Just Numbers, Tools Allow Data to Provide Location Intelligence

Possessing just the raw data can often have little or no impact on your location planning decisions as it is key to interpret what the data is telling you. It is vital to have the ability to shape and cut data creating insight to inform business decisions. Location planning tools enable you to self-serve your analysis by collating multiple datasets and converting it into actionable insight. With data identified and captured you can create detailed reports and maps that can be shared with stakeholders and decision makers.

Location intelligence tools can often collate a wide range of datasets, including but not limited to: geographic, census, geodemographics, and competitor location data. These tools can also have modeling capabilities built into them, so that the user can run scenarios. For example, test the impact of a new site opening or site closure.

Is Location Intelligence Relevant to You?

Location Intelligence is relevant for any type of business that serves customers in a physical retail environment. Location intelligence can be applied across multiple business functions. Whether you work in Marketing , Property , Insight or Finance , location intelligence can be used to support your decisions.

Location intelligence should be a consideration of any business that has a geography. This could be stores, omni-channel sites or warehouses. Even if you don’t have sites, your customers have a geography. By knowing where they are, you can learn more about them and inform decisions accordingly.

Retail Location Planning doesn’t just apply to traditional high street retailers. This could also encompass less traditional retailers, such as leisure operators or service businesses. For example, whether you work for a restaurant and a trampoline park. At GMAP, we also specialise in automotive location planning as well as location planning for the fuel forecourt sector .

" Location intelligence should be a consideration of any business that has a geography "

Having Understood the Importance of Location Intelligence, How Can You Gain Location Intelligence for your Business?

Using location intelligence data and tools in-house can add real value to your location planning decision making. Prior to investing, always consider whether you have the resources to get the insight you need.

If you don’t have the resources or skills available in your team, then GMAP could support you with consultancy . GMAP consultants use data science and spatial modelling techniques to help you grow, optimise, or rationalise your retail network. You and your team can then focus on finding the sites that align to your network plan and implementing the strategy!

Location Intelligence with GMAP

GMAP we hold a number of data products that can support your location intelligence. Some of these datasets include:

GMAP also provide location intelligence software tools that enable clients to conduct in-house spatial analysis. These solutions can often allow users to work with their own data or licensed datasets. They can cut, manipulate and overlay datasets and view them spatially on a map. If you are serious about location intelligence, finding and using the right tools is key.

MVPLUS is our location intelligence tool and location planning software. In addition to this, we provide a number of location intelligence tools depending on your requirement.

Get In Touch

To learn about how our location intelligence data and software, about our location planning consultancy, get in touch! Email us at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585

UK Electric Vehicle Growth & Tax Exemption Impact | GMAP

info@gmap.com (Alice Goddard) — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 09:00:00 GMT

Another Quarter of UK Electric Vehicle Growth: Will This Continue Without The Tax Exemption?

21st November 2022

There Are Now Over Half a Million BEV’s Registered on Roads in Great Britain

Despite recent turbulence in the global car market, Electric Vehicles have become increasingly more commonplace. Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) sales have continued to grow. With more manufacturers releasing BEV models and sub-brands, as well as consumer demand for these models increasing, sales of BEV vehicles have grown strongly in relation to traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. In Great Britain, there are now more than 550,000 BEV’s registered on the roads!

At GMAP , we have used the most recently available DVLA data of vehicle registrations to investigate how BEV’s have grown versus ICE vehicles as well as to provide insight into brand market share. Please note, we have solely focused on BEV’s and this analysis does not include PHEV’s or hybrids.

One in Five New Cars Sold is a Battery Electric Vehicle

Based on Q3 2022 new car registrations data, 20% of new cars registered were BEV’s in comparison to Petrol and Diesel models. Petrol still dominates new car sales, accounting for almost 70% of new car sales, with Diesel making up the remaining 10%. This trend has remained stable throughout 2022 with BEV’s consistently making up around 20% of the market quarterly. In the month of September, new BEV volume was the 2nd highest month in 2022, with March being the highest. March and September, witnessed the highest combined numbers of registrations for Petrol, Diesel and BEV’s in 2022, but BEV still maintained its share and actually surpassed 20% share in both of these months.

The below chart shows the number of new BEV registrations as well as the BEV market share in comparison to ICE vehicles for the last 12 months (October 2021 to September 2022).

Interestingly, as seen on the chart, the highest BEV share in the last 12 months was in December 2021. In comparison to ICE, BEV’s achieved over a 30% share of the new car market in this month.

If we look at this year on year, comparing January to September for 2021 vs 2022, the rapid growth of BEV registrations is clear. Although this may not be a clear indicator of demand due to recent market challenges brought on by the pandemic and a global semiconductor shortage, new BEV volume is up around 40% in 2022 compared with 2021. Most of this growth occurred in Q1 with Feb 2022 volume being almost triple that of Feb 2021 and Jan 2022 volume being more than double of Jan 2021. In 2021, Jan and Feb had the lowest BEV volume for the year, this is likely due to widely reported market challenges. March witnessed a healthy increase and the new BEV market recovered well throughout 2021.

The YoY difference between 2021 and 2022 for the period of May to September averaged less than a 20% increase in volume, which is likely to paint a more realistic picture of sustainable market growth. The below chart shows a comparison of BEV registrations in Q1, 2 and 3 for both 2021 and 2022.

Overall, Q1 2022 had more than double the new BEV volume seen in Q1 2021 but this became more comparable in subsequent quarters. It will be interesting to see how Q4 compares once GMAP has the dvla data available in early 2023.

Comparing Battery Electric Vehicle Brands

With more manufacturers producing dedicated BEV models and product lines, GMAP investigated how brand share in Great Britain had changed. Tesla is the household name in the electric vehicle market and is widely regarded as the market leader. However, as new brands emerge and OEM’s starting to prioritise the BEV market, has Tesla’s share been affected in recent months?

If we compare the last 12 months of quarterly new BEV registrations, Tesla’s dominance is clear with a market share of almost 20% overall. Tesla was top in each quarter between 2021 Q4 and 2022 Q3. They were the only manufacturer to surpass 10,000 sold BEV units within a quarter, they even surpassed 15,000 in 2022 Q1.

Tesla’s market share has remained relatively stable, except for in 2022 Q2 where it witnessed a sharp decline, when it more than halved from what was observed in 2022 Q1. This allowed other manufacturers to gain temporary market share with the remaining 9 manufacturers that made up the top 10 for BEV sales having more than 58% of the BEV market, higher than what has been seen in other quarters.

MG witnessed large growth in the most recent quarterly data compared to the previous three. From 2021 Q4 to 2022 Q2 it was struggling to break through the 3,000 new BEV registrations threshold, but soon surpassed this in 2022 Q3, increasing far beyond 4,000 registrations with growth of over 40% quarter to quarter.

There are close to 40 brands now bringing out BEV models, however the top 10 are responsible for over 70% of the new market. The below pie chart shows how the top 10 is made up:

We can then aggregate this to look at how the top 10 brands measure up in terms of their parent group.

It is no surprise to see Tesla forming the largest section of both charts. Hyundai Motor Corp have the second largest share, with Kia being the largest individual brand behind Tesla and Hyundai featuring at rank five. Volkswagen AG are the third largest parent group with Volkswagen and Audi both featuring in the top 10 brands supported by their ID and e-tron ranges respectively. BMW are the fourth largest brand, closely behind Volkswagen in third place, but fall behind Stellantis when looking at this at Parent Group level.

Surprisingly, neither Renault or Nissan are included in the top 10. Both brands were very early entrants into the BEV market with their respective Zoe and Leaf models, however seem to have fallen behind in recent times. Nissan features eleventh place behind Peugeot and Renault are further down in sixteenth.

A brand to certainly keep an eye on is Cupra, part of Volkswagen AG. From looking at our data, they didn’t register a single BEV in 2021 Q4 but have soon accelerated up the rankings, coming in at rank thirteen for 2022 Q3. In fact, their registrations grew by more than 150% between 2022 Q2 and Q3. It will certainly be interesting to see how these newer entrants to the BEV market perform and grow over the next year.

Comparing Battery Electric Vehicle Brands

This piece has been designed to provide a brief overview to the current state of the BEV market in relation to ICE vehicles as well as to investigate brand performance. Comparisons have been made between 2022 and 2021, it is important to note that the global car market has suffered significant challenges and disruption during this time and may not reflect true performance under more stable market conditions.

BEV’s have seemingly cemented their place as the second most common fuel type for new car sales (hybrids excluded) and currently have around twice the market share of Diesel vehicles. Whilst their numbers are still far off matching that of Petrol cars, we can only see BEV’s share of the market increasing. In terms of brands, Tesla is still the dominant force in the BEV market but as more brands and groups produce more dedicated BEV models, Tesla’s share will inevitably start to decrease and the market will become a more even playing field.

Without Electric Car Tax Exemptions, Will This Continue?

In the Autumn Statement on the UK budget on the 17th November, BEV owners will no longer be exempt from paying car tax from 2025 onwards. Will this affect future purchasing behaviour in the Electric Vehicle market?

Access the DVLA Data to Support Your Automotive Location Intelligence

GMAP’s DVLA data product provides a comprehensive insight into the UK vehicle market, including new and used transactions and vehicle parc. If you feel that our DVLA data may be of use to you to support your location intelligence activities surrounding the BEV market or anything automotive , then please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

T here Are Now Over Half a Million BEV’s Registered on Roads in Great Britain

At GMAP, we have used the most recently available DVLA data of vehicle registrations to investigate how BEV’s havegrown versus ICE vehicles as well as to provide insight into brand market share. Please note, we have solely focused on BEV’s and this analysis does not include PHEV’s or hybrids.

One in Five New Cars Sold is a Battery Electric Vehicle

The below chart shows the number of new BEV registrations as well as the BEV market share in comparison to ICE vehicles for the last 12 months (October 2021 to September 2022).

Interestingly, as seen on the chart, the highest BEV share in the last 12 months was in December 2021. In comparison to ICE, BEV’s achieved over a 30% share of the new car market in this month.

Comparing Battery Electric Vehicle Brands

There are close to 40 brands now bringing out BEV models, however the top 10 are responsible for over 70% of the new market. The below pie chart shows how the top 10 is made up:

We can then aggregate this to look at how the top 10 brands measure up in terms of their parent group.

Comparing Battery Electric Vehicle Brands

Without Electric Car Tax Exemptions, Will This Continue?

Access the DVLA Data to Support Your Automotive Location Intelligence

GMAP’s Location Planners raise £1,510 for Leeds-Based Charity Simon on the Streets

info@gmap.com (Alice Goddard) — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 09:00:04 GMT

GMAP’s Location Planners raise £1,510 for Leeds-Based Charity Simon on the Streets

31st October 2022

GMAP's Location Planning Consultants Log Off For the Day & Take to the Yorkshire Dales to Raise Money for Charity

Last month, some of the GMAP Location Planners took a well-deserved break from providing location intelligence to our clients and logged out of MVPLUS to hike 24.5 miles in the Yorkshire Dales for charity Simon on the Streets!

Earlier this year, GMAP Analytics became 5-for-5 partners of Simon on the Streets . Simon on the Streets is a Leeds-based charity who offer emotional and practical support for the homeless and vulnerable across Leeds, Bradford & Huddersfield to enable them to achieve their goals. All their services are delivered on an outreach basis directly on the streets. They deliver outreach during the day, as well as in the evening and in the early hours of the morning when many of the most vulnerable are struggling.

Signing up for the Yorkshire Three Peaks was our first big fundraiser. We also boosted our fundraising activities, by holding a bake sale at our home in Nexus Leeds, and promoted our hike amongst the friends and families of the GMAP team.

The date was set for Sunday 17th July, and we were all prepared to go, until the July heat wave deterred our plans. Despite this, GMAP were determined to deliver and on Thursday 8th September we woke up at 4.30am and took to the Dales.

Firstly, we hiked up into the clouds to the top of Pen-y-Ghent. Following a quick break in the rain, we walked 12 miles to Ribblehead for lunch under the viaduct. The heavens opened at the top of Whernside, our 2nd peak, making it a precarious walk/slide down, but as we made our way to Ingleborough the sun came out and we ended our 3rd and final peak in glorious sunshine. When we arrived back at the car park in Horton in Ribblesdale at 6.35pm, we took off our squelching boots, assessed some very bruised ankles, and went for a pint at the local pub to celebrate that we had successfully completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks in under 12 hours, clocking up between 57,000 and 61,000 steps (depending on leg length)!

Although the Three Peaks were a great achievement, what we are most proud of is the £1,510 we raised for Simon on the Streets. We hope this will help Simon on the Streets in the incredible work they do supporting the homeless and vulnerable in our home city of Leeds.

For now, we will go back to providing location planning consultancy, location intelligence data and location intelligence software for our clients, but we look forward to our next opportunity to raise money for Simon on the Streets!

Why Should You Care About Location Intelligence?

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 11:20:15 GMT

Why Should You Care About Location Intelligence?

24th October 2022

Location Intelligence Explained: Why it is Critical for a Business’ Location Planning and Site Selection

" Location often contributes to the success or failure of a particular site or an entire retail network "

Location Intelligence Explained

Location intelligence is the process of obtaining insights from a spatial perspective. Location Intelligence can be used to inform location decisions. It is derived from the collection and analysis of geographic and geospatial data. Location intelligence often incorporates visual representations of business assets, competitor assets, and customer locations. Using location intelligence, a business can understand the consumer and competitive landscape in a region. From this, informed strategic decision making can occur based on specific consumer needs, assets in the area, and competitor presence.

Using Geodemographic Data for Successful Location Intelligence

The use of data to inform decisions is a key contributor to successful business performance and for location intelligence it is no different. Ensure you access the right data to get the most our of your analysis. Decisions to locate your business come down to accessing the right customers. Therefore, in location planning the assessment of geodemographic data is key. For an existing or potential new site you can analyse the catchment to assess whether the surrounding population aligns with you target customer profile. You can then compare and rank to other existing or potential sites.

Geodemographic classifications categorise people into consumer types. Think of geo as the places and demographic as the people. Geodemographic data includes:

Demographic information, including age and ethnicity
Household data and housing characteristics
Socio-economic factors, such as education, car ownership, employment status and economic activity
Additional consumer information such as credit and purchase history data or survey data which some geodemographic datasets are also enriched by

Accessing the Right Data for Location Intelligence

How far do customers currently travel to your existing sites?
What would be the drive times for your current customers to your proposed locations?
How far away is your proposed location from your nearest competitors?

Data Without Analysis is Just Numbers, Tools Allow Data to Provide Location Intelligence

Possessing just the raw data alone can often have little or no impact on your location planning decisions, as it is the interpretation of data that is key. It is vital to have the ability to shape and cut data to create insight to inform business decisions. Location planning tools enable you to self-serve your analysis by collating multiple datasets and converting it into actionable insight. With data identified and captured you can create detailed reports and maps that can be shared with stakeholders and decision makers.

Is Location Intelligence Relevant to You?

" Location intelligence should be a consideration of any business that has a geography "

Having Understood the Importance of Location Intelligence, How Can You Gain Location Intelligence for your Business?

Location Intelligence with GMAP

At GMAP we hold a number of data products that can support your location intelligence. Some of these datasets include:

GMAP also provide location intelligence software tools that enable clients to conduct in-house spatial analysis. MVPLUS is our off-the-shelf location intelligence tool and location planning software . In addition to this, we have experience building more bespoke location intelligence tools to suit individual clients. These solutions can often allow users to work with their own data or licensed datasets. They can cut, manipulate and overlay datasets and view them spatially on a map. If you are serious about location intelligence, finding and using the right tools is key.

Get In Touch

To learn about how our location intelligence data and software, about our location planning consultancy, get in touch! Email us at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585

Location Intelligence Explained: Why it is Critical for a Business’ Location Planning and Site Selection

" Location often contributes to the success or failure of a particular site or an entire retail network "

Location Intelligence Explained

Using Geodemographic Data for Successful Location Intelligence

Geodemographic classifications categorise people into consumer types. Think of geo as the places and demographic as the people. Geodemographic data includes:

Demographic information, including age and ethnicity
Household data and housing characteristics
Socio-economic factors, such as education, car ownership, employment status and economic activity
Additional consumer information. Some geodemographic datasets are also enriched by credit or purchase history data and survey data

Accessing the Right Data for Location Intelligence

How far do customers currently travel to your existing sites?
What would be the drive times for your current customers to your proposed locations?
How far away is your proposed location from your nearest competitors?

Data Without Analysis is Just Numbers, Tools Allow Data to Provide Location Intelligence

Is Location Intelligence Relevant to You?

" Location intelligence should be a consideration of any business that has a geography "

Having Understood the Importance of Location Intelligence, How Can You Gain Location Intelligence for your Business?

Location Intelligence with GMAP

GMAP we hold a number of data products that can support your location intelligence. Some of these datasets include:

MVPLUS is our location intelligence tool and location planning software. In addition to this, we provide a number of location intelligence tools depending on your requirement.

Get In Touch

To learn about how our location intelligence data and software, about our location planning consultancy, get in touch! Email us at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 113 306 1585

Wimbledon 2022: Exploring Where has the Highest Tennis Provision in the UK?

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 10:10:52 GMT

Wimbledon 2022: Exploring Where has the Highest Tennis Provision in the UK?

28th June 2022

Yesterday was the first day of Wimbledon 2022! Every year, Wimbledon inspires many newcomers to the sport, and for others to dust off their tennis rackets and get back out on the court. To celebrate the start of the 14-day tournament, we have done some location analysis of the UK Tennis Courts using our LeisureVision location data in our MVPLUS location intelligence software to determine where is the Tennis hotspot in the UK.

In Figure 1 is a map of the Tennis Courts in relation to Population, by Postcode Area. Redhill, in the South East, has the highest number of tennis courts per person. This is followed by Galashiels, Guildford, Cambridge, Tunbridge Wells and Oxford. In these areas, any Wimbledon fans that are looking to get out on the court will have the best opportunity for access.

Figure 1: Tennis Provision (Tennis Courts by Population) by Postcode Area in the UK

With exception of Galashiels, which has the 2nd highest number of tennis courts by population, the Postcode Areas with the highest tennis provision are in the South East on the periphery of London. This is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Tennis Provision (Tennis Courts by Population) by Postcode Area in the UK, London & the South East

The London SW Postcode Area, in which Wimbledon is located, ranked 35th out of 124 for tennis provision. This is likely caused by the large population in this area, which is over 875,000. When only to taking into account the number of tennis courts, London SW ranked 14th.

Tennis is often associated with affluence, partially due to the membership costs of tennis clubs. Using the CAMEO geodemographic dataset, we have looked at the portion of the population in each of the CAMEO Groups in these areas to see how access to tennis provision correlates with wealth. CAMEO generally depicts an order of wealth, with 01 having the highest affluence with 10 having the lowest. Figure 3 shows the population % in CAMEO Groups 01 to 03, and Figure 4 shows the population % in CAMEO Groups 08 to 10.

Figure 3: % of Population in 01, 02 & 03 CAMEO Groups

Figure 4: % of Population in 08, 09 & 10 CAMEO Groups

Looking closer at the top areas with tennis provision in the South East, 44% and 45% of the Redhill and Guildford populations were in the 01 to 03 CAMEO Groups. This compared to an average of 23% for all Postcode Areas in the UK. Cambridge, Tunbridge Wells and Oxford had 28%, 32% and 36% of their populations in these CAMEO groups. Of the top areas in the South East had a population rate for the lowest three CAMEO groups, 08 to 10, under 19%. This reiterates how these areas, with such high tennis provision, have a more affluent population.

Motherwell, Wigan, Liverpool, Oldham and London Eastern Central are the areas with lowest tennis provision in the country. Looking at the CAMEO data, this emphasised the wealth disparity that could be linked with tennis provision. Except for London Eastern Central, all these areas had a below average population rate of the 01 to 03 CAMEO Groups. Wigan, Oldham and Liverpool had respective 01 to 03 population rate of 5%, 6% and 10%, whilst Motherwell had 20%. Whereas they had high populations of the bottom three CAMEO Groups 08 to 10, with Wigan, Oldham and Liverpool having 51%, 61%, and 56% of their populations in these CAMEO Groups.

Our initial location analysis suggests that tennis does indeed correlate with wealth, and the spatial correlation between tennis provision and affluence reiterates that there is perhaps a north south divide to tennis. This could be due to private schools having better tennis provision, as well as exclusivity around tennis clubs and high membership costs excluding the less affluent portion of society.

We hope that this years Wimbledon can inspire those from all backgrounds to get out on the court! And to of course enjoy your strawberries and cream, even if you haven’t been lucky enough to get tickets to this year’s tournament.

Get In Touch

To find out more about our LeisureVision location data or our MVPLUS location analytics software, get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Hybrid Working; Learn How Far Your Employees Travel to Work with MVPLUS Location Intelligence

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 10:42:11 GMT

Hybrid Working; Learn How Far Your Employees Travel to Work with MVPLUS Location Intelligence

22nd June 2022

In the past few years, what ‘going to work’ means has changed drastically for many. With the outbreak of Covid-19 over two years ago, many that had never worked remotely before were setting up their new offices anywhere they could in their homes. Two years on, most companies that have decided to keep their offices and not become fully remote, have returned to, at least some, in-person working. Many businesses are operating on a hybrid model, with a few days in the office and a few at home. The GMAP team is no different, as we are coming into our office in Nexus at the Leeds University campus at least two days each week, and the rest at home.

Visualising how far your employees travel to work can be used to aid your employee management and support core business decisions. Such insight can be used for a host of activities, such as prioritising working from home or shift patterns, organising events or conferences, tailoring travel to work benefits, deciding where to move an office to, or where to access shared meeting spaces. Ultimately understanding the commuter patterns of your employees can lead to increased well-being and staff retention.

In MVPLUS you can quickly map where your employees live, you can link your employees to your office or workplace locations to automatically calculate drive time statistics. From this, you could calculate average drive times or drive distances. We did this for the employees at GMAP. Discounting one remote member of the team, on average the GMAP team live 34minutes, or 43 km from the office! The closest employee lives just 4 minutes from the office, whilst the furthest lives 94 minutes.

From your average employee drive times, you can quickly create drive time catchments for your workplaces to visualise how far your employees travel to work. You could use this location intelligence for a variety of exercises, such as considering where could be the optimal location to move an office to or where to look for a coworking hub. It could also help you decide which offices to close, and where to expand.

Watch our latest video to see how you could gain such location intelligence insights using MVPLUS :

Get In Touch

To find out more about MVPLUS , and how you could use the tool to provide location intelligence to support analysis across different functions, from Property to Marketing to Human Resources, get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Electric Revolution? The 5 Year Trend of New and Used Cars in the UK

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 09:05:53 GMT

Electric Revolution? The 5 Year Trend of New and Used Cars in the UK

14th June 2022

It’s no secret that the current car market has faced a number of challenges, predominantly brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst new vehicles are facing production issues caused by a global semiconductor chip shortage, used vehicle demand has spiked. Demand for used cars has outpaced supply, causing a significant increase in the price of such vehicles, and dealerships have been unable to replace stock fast enough to meet requirements.

At GMAP we used our DVLA Vehicle Registrations data set to investigate how New and Used Car Transactions have changed across the last five years. We compared the 2017Q1 release to the most recently available data, 2022Q1. Due to the widely reported growth of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), we also looked at how individual propulsion types had changed throughout this period. From this, we compared traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars, Petrol and Diesel, against BEVs. Hybrids or variants of were excluded from this data. Watch the video in Figure 1 to see the changes in New and Used Car Transactions between the first quarter of 2017, compared to the first quarter of 2022:

Figure 1: 5-Year Trends in New and Used Car Transactions between 2017 and 2022

New Transactions

In general, the new car market has seen a decline in transaction volume from 2017 to 2022 . The total number of Petrol, Diesel and BEV transactions for the latest quarter was only around 38% of the volume witnessed in 2017Q1. Looking at the data quarter by quarter, transaction volume has been on the decline since our initial time period with no single quarter exceeding the volume seen in 2017Q1. As expected, the lowest volume of new transactions was seen in 2020Q2 as the UK entered it’s first lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown ground the UK car market to a halt with all dealerships having to close their doors to the public. As a result, the new car transaction volume witnessed in this quarter was less than a fifth of the volume from the initial quarter in this analysis. Every other quarter, bar one, had at least double the volume of this pandemic-stricken quarter.

The petrol and diesel car volumes followed a similar pattern to the total market. This is unsurprising given that ICE vehicles form the majority of the UK car market. Diesel has seen the largest decline, with the latest quarterly volume being at less than 10% of the 2017Q1 volume. This latest quarters volume is very close to the 2020Q2 volume seen during the COVID-19 lockdown. Surprisingly, the lowest quarterly volume came in 2021Q4, rather than during any lockdown. Diesel volume has not shown any signs of recovery since the pandemic with no quarter since 2020Q2 having volume higher than pre-pandemic levels. In fact, annual Diesel sales from 2017-2021 have been on a constant decline with total Diesel volume almost halving from 2017 to 2019, and 2021 reporting the lowest total Diesel volume in this data. Diesel sales have suffered since the 2015 “Dieselgate” scandal and a number of negative headlines surrounding their car emissions have compounded their lack of popularity. Residual value is also a concern with the UK Government announcement of outlawing the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.

Petrol remains the dominant fuel type compared to diesel and BEV with around 70% of the total share. This has remained stable over the last 3 years. Whilst petrol has witnessed a steady decline in volume, it is far from the extent of diesels decline. Since 2017Q1, petrol’s lowest volume came in 2020Q2, as expected, but it has been able to hold its market position in comparison to diesel. Whilst petrol has maintained around 70% of the market over the last three years when compared to diesel and BEV, diesel has seen a decline from around 28% in 2019, down to 15% in 2021.

The key highlight from our data is the growth of BEV. It’s safe to say that the BEV market is in its infancy but it is growing at a rapid pace. In comparison to ICE vehicles, new BEV transactions in 2017 made up less than 1% of the market. This has grown substantially. In 2022Q1, the most recently available data, BEV share vs ICE is now over 20% of new car volume. Whilst diesel has been on a decline, BEV has taken its place as the number two fuel type. In the last three quarters, 2021Q3, 2021Q4 and 2022Q1, BEV volume was higher than diesel and in the last two quarters it was more than double diesel volume for new car transactions.

Consumers are evidently favouring “greener” vehicle options and potentially viewing a new BEV purchase as a more future-proof investment with the demand for these vehicles increasing. This growth has been constant. Even whilst in the middle of a semiconductor shortage, new BEV registrations have increased almost every quarter, with the exception of 2021Q1, since the pandemic began. With consumer attitudes changing and with more and more BEV models being released into the market, it is likely we will see this trend continue. There is still a long way to go for new BEV volume to overtake petrol, however it seems likely that we will see this in the not-too-distant future based on the rate of BEVs growth.

Figure 2a: New Car Registrations by Year 2017 - 2022

Figure 2b: YoY New Car Registrations by Propulsion Type Between 2017 - 2022

Used Transactions

With the decline in new car transactions being apparent, has this had an impact on the used car market? A declining new car market also means a declining supply of cars entering the used car market after initial ownership and lease agreements come to an end, however the recent production problems with new cars has ensured that the used car market remains buoyant.

The used car market has seen a slight decline in volumes between 2017Q1 and 2022Q1 but it is far more stable than what has been witnessed in the new car market. The volumes in the latest quarters data were at about 80% of those observed in 2017Q1. From 2017Q1 to the point of the lockdown in 2020Q2, every quarter was lower than the initial 2017Q1 volume but were all within 80+% with an average volume of over 90%. Thus, showing a much more stable used market in comparison to new. As expected, the lowest volume was observed in 2020Q2, however there was an immediate rebound with 2020Q3 having the highest volume since 2017Q1. With pent up demand caused by the lockdown, and with global new car production slowing, consumers seemingly turned their attention to the used market. It is worth noting that whilst 2020Q2 was the lowest quarter for used volume, with around 50% of the volume seen in 2017Q1 and YoY in 2019Q2, it wasn’t impacted anywhere near as badly as the new market. It has been widely reported that demand for used cars and their prices have soared over the last 12 months as a result of the shortage of stock entering the market, some used vehicles even selling for a higher price than when they were new. As the UK faces a cost living crisis, it will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

The fuel type variances in the used market are far more consistent throughout the data compared to the new market. Petrol and diesel make up almost the full market with 60:40 split, with only a couple of percentage points variance between years. In comparison to the new market where diesel share dropped dramatically over time, the used market has very little change across the time period within our data. In contrast to the new transactions data, used petrol volume has seemingly declined faster than diesel. Used petrol volume in 2020Q2 was less than half of the volume versus 2017Q1 at around 46%, diesel showed a close, but milder decline managing to stay above 50% of the 2017Q1 volume.

Used BEV transactions have continued to grow, although not to the extent of the new market. As more and more BEVs reach the end of leasing agreements and initial ownership, more become available to the used market. This will see this area of the market inevitably grow as BEVs become more widely available and accessible to consumers eager to make a “greener” purchase for their next vehicle. This is emerging in the recent data with used BEV transactions in 2022Q1 being more than double those seen in 2021Q1. Used BEV transactions made up around 1% of the total compared to ICE in 2022Q1, up from around 0.1% in 2017. In fact, 2022Q1 had more used BEV transactions than the whole of 2019 which goes to show that this is growing at a rapid pace. This will continue to grow, and we will likely see a spike in growth in 2-3 years as the current growth in new BEVs transition into the used market.

Figure 3a: Used Car Registrations by Year 2017 - 2022

Figure 3b: YoY Used Car Registrations by Propulsion Type Between 2017 - 2022

Summarising What's Changed Between 2017 and 2022?

This blog has highlighted 5-year trends in our DVLA registrations data for both new and used cars, specifically looking at petrol, diesel, and electric cars. We’ve been able to assess the impact that the COVID-19 lockdown had on this, how the market has recovered as well as what the future of the market may hold. In the new car data, it is clear to see that BEVs growth is outpacing ICE vehicles and has consistently grown over the 5-year period whereas the total market has declined. BEV has seemingly established itself as the number two fuel type, overtaking diesel. The used market is far more stable with petrol and diesel remaining the dominant fuel types but BEVs growth is starting to filter through into the used market. The used BEV market is in its infancy, and we will likely see larger growth in the coming years.

Get In Touch

If you feel that our bespoke DVLA data extracts could add value to your organisation, or would like to find out more about our Dashboard Reporting capabilities used to visualise the 5-year changes, then please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Retail & Leisure in the New UK Jubilee Cities | GMAP

Fri, 27 May 2022 12:20:26 GMT

The Retail & Leisure Proposition of the New UK Cities Announced for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

27th May 2022

Last week it was announced that in honour for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, eight new towns have been given city status. In the competition to gain city status, these cities had to prove they have a cultural heritage, royal links, and how their local identity and communities meant their deserved city status.

Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland
Colchester, Essex, England
Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England
Douglas, Isle of Man
Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England
Stanley, Falkland Islands
Wrexham, northeast Wales

Using our RetailVision and LeisureVision products, we have looked at the retail and leisure markets in some of these new cities looks like! Overall, from our analysis we deciphered that Milton Keynes currently has the best retail and leisure proposition currently than to the rest of the new cities, whilst Bangor has the worst.

The latest Q1 2022 update of our RetailVision product tells us that Milton Keynes has the highest Revenue across Grocery, Fashion & Comparison, Electrical & Homeware & DIY. From LeisureVision, Milton Keynes has the highest count of Food & Beverage (F&B) outlet locations of the new cities. Figure 1 shows a heat map of the RetailVision Points retail location outlets within the Milton Keynes Super Trade Zone, the Retail Centres that sit within it, and the Retail Centre with the highest Retail Strength highlighted. Figure 2 shows a heat map of the LeisureVision F & B provision within Milton Keynes.

Figure 1: Retail Provision in the Milton Keynes highlighting the strength of Retail Centre: MK

Figure 2: F&B Provision in the Milton Keynes

Bangor in Northern Ireland, on the contrary, ranks lowest when it comes to RetailVision Revenue and the presence of F&B outlet locations. From RetailVision, we can see that Colchester and Doncaster sit closely to one another in terms of overall retail store location count and retail Revenue. Whilst LeisureVision indicates that Colchester has a stronger F&B outlet presence than that of Doncaster in terms of absolute counts. Furthermore, Doncaster’s retail store mix is more value orientated compared to that of Colchester.

Similarly, to Doncaster, the current store offering in Wrexham in northeast Wales is geared much towards value orientated brands, with the greatest proportion of the retail brands being categorised as Value+. The total retail store provision in Wrexham is almost half that of Doncaster. Dunfermline, on the other hand, has an overall retail and F&B presence that is slightly higher than that of Wrexham, yet, Homeware & DIY and Electrical spend is quite a bit lower in Dunfermline.

Using the RetailVision Geo-Mobility Catchments for Wrexham (Figure 3) and Doncaster (Figure 4), we can see the average di stance visitors to these destinations travel and the populations within the Catchments. Using geo-mobility data we can see how far people travel on average to a Retail Destination. With Wrexham being more rural than Doncaster it has a larger catchment (23km vs 15km) but the households it serves is 75% lower.

Figure 3: RetailVision Geo-Mobility Catchment of Wrexham, ~55,000 Households, 23km

Figure 4: RetailVision Geo-Mobility Catchment of Doncaster, ~200,000 Households, 15km

With naming the new cities, the intention is that it will drive attention and investments to these cities. It will be interesting to see, with the new city status, if the retail and leisure provisions within the city change. Only time will tell, in the meantime we will focus on celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee!

Get In Touch

Visit our RetailVision and LeisureVision web pages to find out more about how we did this analysis. Get in touch at info@gmap.com to find out more.

Analysing Eurovision 2022, and What’s the Secret of Meghan Markle’s Healthy Hair?

Thu, 12 May 2022 09:43:28 GMT

Analysing Eurovision 2022, and What’s the Secret of Meghan Markle’s Healthy Hair?

12th May 2022

So, what’s the secret of Meghan Markle’s healthy hair? Deep hydration is the answer, if the singer of Serbia’s entry in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest is to be believed. And perhaps namechecking someone so famous in a song, mainly sung in Serbian, will give them the je ne sais quoi they need to attract points. It’s actually a good song, and even though it doesn’t have the traditional Balkan vibe, it should get points from its neighbours.

For the past few years now, the organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest have released all the voting data from both the public votes and the juries, and sometimes, but not always, it does confirm that neighbouring countries do vote for each other. Historical, cultural and linguistic similarities obviously play their part in how much people enjoy a performance. In Figures 1 and 2 see our analysis of the rankings each country has given to another over the years compared to the average.

Figure 1: Map of Average Scores From the Public Vote 2014 – 2021

Figure 2: Table of Average Scores From the Public Vote 2014 – 2021

From our analysis, certain combinations really stand out! Read on for some more in-depth analysis and predications what is in store this weekend for Eurovision 2022.

Viewers of a certain age in the UK will recall Terry Wogan would always predict 12 points from Greece to Cyprus and vice-versa, way before the announcers would do so. Thankfully that’s one tradition that hasn’t changed in the slightest. In the Balkans, the former Yugoslav countries can all be counted on to vote for each other, with Albania and Bulgaria also featuring highly with the public vote from those countries furthest south. In an effort to reduce these effects as much as possible, neighbouring countries are now placed in separate semi-finals, meaning such tendencies don’t affect the qualification process at least.

Elsewhere, Belgium will vote for the Netherlands and the Netherlands will vote for Belgium. Both countries have upped their game in Eurovision terms in recent years, so this has really started to stand out. Similarly, the German speaking countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) tend to vote more highly for each other than most countries, but this doesn’t necessarily equate to maximum points being awarded – just that the affinity between these countries is higher than most.

The Nordic countries all vote highly for each other, particularly Denmark to Sweden (slightly less so in the other direction), Iceland to Denmark (slightly less so in the other direction) and Sweden to Norway (slightly less so in the other direction). The Baltic States do likewise amongst themselves, and Finland divides itself between both the Scandi and Baltic camps.

A few others of note to point out are between Romania and Moldova, including Italy and Portugal to a lesser extent in that mix. The more people move to live and work in other countries, the more the diaspora affects the scoring at Eurovision. The UK and Ireland will vote for Poland, but sometimes we may even give more points to Lithuania. The affinity is high between Albania and Italy, and between France and Armenia. Australia, Ireland and Malta score the UK much more highly than most countries, but given our recent contributions this still doesn’t actually translate into many points.

With Russia banned from entering this year, one of the most important blocs of voting affinity has been shattered. The states of the former Soviet Union would tend to vote highly for each other. Now this leaves Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus without Russia to vote for. Armenia and Azerbaijan will vote for Georgia, and Georgia will vote for Armenia and Azerbaijan. The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan guarantees that neither of these countries will vote for each other; indeed they are almost certain to rank each other last, both from the juries and the public vote.

However, this year the war in Ukraine must be on everyone’s minds when they watch Eurovision. The fact that Ukraine is even taking part should be something for the nation to be proud of. It’s likely that this in itself will garner enough support for a landslide from the public vote. The question is, will the national juries behave likewise? You may remember the Polish milkmaids from 2014 – the UK public gave them top marks but the UK jury ranked them 26th out of 26.

Ukraine often has a great song. They’ve won twice (Ruslana in 2004, Jamala in 2016) and have had some fabulous also-rans (Verka Serduchka in 2007, Svetlana Loboda in 2009 amongst others). But this year’s entry is a bit more mid-table than usual. If you’re honestly ranking songs from best to worst, this year’s entry for Ukraine wouldn’t be at the top of the list. In fact, it wasn’t even at the top of Ukraine’s list. In the Ukrainian selection show back in February, their entry came second (the act that came first ended up being disqualified).

Italy would win again this year if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine. The Italian entry is excellent and ticks all the right boxes. For four hours on 14 May we’ll hopefully be able to concentrate on the battle between Italy and Ukraine at Eurovision. In a modern Europe, this should really be as confrontational as it gets.

Ultimately, we can’t narrow it down to a two-horse race. There are 40 countries competing at this year’s Eurovision and some of them are really good. All sorts of national affinities ensure that certain countries receive more points than others. What’s really important to stand out above the rest is having a good song. The UK has repeatedly entered without taking that into account for several years now. This year it’s an exception, the UK is quite good, so let’s see how well we do. And if you think this year’s Ukrainian entry isn’t for you but you liked the more Kazantip vibe of last year’s entry, there’s bound to be more of that sort of brilliance in years to come. Have a few vodkas and turn the sound up on the Serbian entry and you’re almost there.

Get In Touch

What are your thoughts on our Eurovision analysis? Get in touch at info@gmap.com to have your say or to learn more about our day-to-day analytics capabilities. Enjoy Eurovision 2022!

How GMAP’s Dashboard Reporting Can Add Life to Your Data

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:20:30 GMT

How GMAP’s Dashboard Reporting Can Add Life to Your Data

21st April 2022

GMAP’s Reporting services include bespoke reports, reporting dashboards and live reporting capabilities that can help to provide geographical insight into your sales, customer, and other company data to inform business decision-making.

With GMAP Business Intelligence services, we can build bespoke solutions that enable you to see data in an easy-to-use report dashboard which can be used by any stakeholders in your business. GMAP’s datasets can be built into your reports to enhance your data and ensure every initiative is as learned as possible.

From small bespoke reports to widely distributed live information services to hundreds of users, GMAP have experience in deploying the latest tools to distribute informative market intelligence efficiently and securely.

Sales Reporting & Targets

We can build you a bespoke report specifically for your business, which using your company sales data, can help you to understand how each of the points in your network is performing on a continual basis in an easy-to-use interactive dashboard.

In addition, we can work with you to create sales targets for each point in your retail network which can help you to plan efficiently and effectively. This can also be used in your Sales Reporting to benchmark performance.

Measure Your Progress in Achieving Your Ideal Network Plan

At GMAP, the core of our offering is our Location Planning Consultancy services in which we create Ideal Network Plans (INPs) for a whole host of clients across multiple sectors including automotive, retail, leisure, fuel forecourt. We can deliver the outputs of your Ideal Network Plan in a reporting dashboard, which can be used to measure the progress towards implementation.

GMAP Reporting in Practice

1. The Used Car Report Dashboard Tool

The Used Car Report is just one example of how GMAP have built a dashboard to inform client decisions.

The Used Car Report is a Reporting Dashboard solution we have created at GMAP, which combines DVLA transaction data with client sales data. This can be used to assess how your Dealer Network is performing against the territory market and can inform vehicle stocking profiles.

Data can be viewed as charts, tables, or maps depending on your requirement. Within the Used Car Report you can filter, sort, and interact with the data to quickly analyse performance:

Geographically by Territory, Post Sector and Drive Time
By Vehicle Segment
By Propulsion (e.g. BEV vs. ICE)
By Transaction Type
By Make and Model
Temporally and Year-on-Year

Watch the video below to see an example of the Used Car Report brought to life and see an example of what GMAP’s Reporting Dashboards offering could look like to you.

With the turbulent changes in the automotive industry in recent years, and turn towards Electric Vehicles, the DVLA dataset and Used Car Report is more important than ever. To find out more about the Used Car Report how could support you, or the DVLA Car Registrations Data, please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

2. The RetailVision Dashboard Tool

RetailVision by GMAP is designed to provide stakeholders with a comprehensive depiction of the UK retail landscape. RetailVision consists of RetailVision Points, a competitively priced retail locations dataset with coverage of over 80,000 stores for 800 brands, and RetailVision Destination, which provides a detailed illustration of the UK’s retail landscape.

As part of our RetailVision data offering, we offer an off-the-shelf dashboard solution as part of our RetailVision data offering. The RetailVision Dashboard Tool can be used to:

Visualise the RetailVision Points dataset to analyse competitor and affinity store portfolios.
Use RetailVision Destinations quickly see the breakdown of typical Centre attributes of the Retail Centres in which your competitors are located, such as Centre Type, Centre Revenues, and Average Floorspaces.
Compare Retail Centres, Trade Zones and Super Trade Zones nationally, or drill down to specific areas, centre types or categories.
Evaluate Centre Revenues and Footfall across different time periods to prioritise new site acquisitions or assess why some of your sites differ in performance.

See the images below to see what the RetailVision Reporting Dashboard Tool looks like:

To find out more about the RetailVision Dashboard Tool visit RetailVision , or read an example of how we used the Dashboard last month in our blog: ‘Considering the Potential Pending Sale of Health & Beauty Retailer Boots Using GMAP’s RetailVision Data’.

If you would like to combine your data to RetailVision within a Dashboard, this is something we could support you with. To find out more get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Get In Touch

If you would like to find out more about how GMAP’s Reporting Dashboard capabilities could be used to enhance your data, or to learn more about the Used Car Report or RetailVision Dashboard Tools, please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Mother’s Day: the UK Card and Gift Shop Hotspots from GMAP’s RetailVision

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 12:23:31 GMT

Mother’s Day: The UK Card and Gift Shop Hotspots from GMAP’s RetailVision

24th March 2022

This Sunday not only marks the start of daylight savings, but also Mother’s Day in the UK!

From around the 16th century, on the fourth Sunday of Lent it became tradition to attend a church service in the nearest important church or cathedral, known as the ‘Mother’ church. Over time, Mothering Sunday became a celebration of the role of the mother. Children typically give a card and a gift to their mother’s, or even make them breakfast! After Christmas and Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day is the third most popular holiday to buy greeting cards for.

We have used the RetailVision Points dataset in our MVPLUS software to explore where the hotspots for card and gift shops in the UK are.

Card Shop Hotspots in the UK

In Figure 1 we have mapped where the hotspot for card shop brands in the UK are. Greater London is a key hotspot for the chain card shops, followed by other key UK cities including Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, and Glasgow.

Figure 1

Over 20% of the card shops fell in Small Secondary Trade Zones, with 15% falling in Large Tertiary Trade Zones and 15% in Medium Secondary Trade Zones. This suggests that card shops are not just located in the core central parts of UK cities, but in the more accessible Trade Zones close to where people live.

When looking at the RetailVision Retail Centres in which the card shop locations fell, over 50% were in Shopping Districts and 30% in Shopping Centres.

Card Factory has the highest number of stores in its UK portfolio, with over 1,000 stores. Clinton’s is the next largest brand, with under a third of the stores of Card Factory. Other key brands include Paperchase, Hallmark, Cardzone, and Scribbler. However, none of these brands come close to Card Factory in terms of number of stores.

Gift Shop Hotspots in the UK

Figure 2 below shows the hotspots for gift shop brands in the UK. London stands out as the main hotspot for gift shops which are part of key chains. This is followed by Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham, Manchester, and Brighton.

Figure 2

Unsurprisingly, the retail environment that gift shops fell in were similar Trade Zone and Centre Types to the location of card shops, albeit slightly more London biased. Oliver Bonas is one of the top gift shop brands, which has around half their stores within the M25.

Get In Touch

Don’t forget to go get a card, perhaps a gift, and to turn back those clocks! To find out more about the RetailVision store locations or how our MVPLUS system can be used for retail profiling or location analysis, please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

How You Can Learn More About Your Customers Using MVPLUS

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 17:21:42 GMT

How You Can Learn More About Your Customers Using MVPLUS

21st March 2022

One of the key applications of GMAP’s MVPLUS software is to help our clients to understand their customers, which can inform their strategic business decision making.

Do you have postcode data for your customers? If so, MVPLUS can be used to:

Audit and validate your customer postcode data
Understand where your customers are located
Determine how far customers travel to each of your sites
Establish the nearest store to your customers, including online customers
Analyse who your customer is and what characterises them
Identify where there are more of your customer types

Audit & Validate Your Customer Postcode Data

When working with large postcode datasets, such as customer files, it can be hard to determine Postcodes that are out of date, incorrectly formatted or altogether wrong. Postcode data that is incorrect can cause records to be analysed incorrectly.

When importing data, MVPLUS efficiently validates postcodes and flags those that need attention, as well as attempting to formats postcodes that are incorrectly formatted. Postcode validation is not geographically limited, MVPLUS can be tailored to any market across the world.

The following video explains how you can validate the postcode data of your online or instore customers, and why it is important to do so:

Understand Where Your Customers Are Located

Knowing where your customers are located can help you understand any missed local opportunities, and how to address these. This knowledge could be applied to your location planning decisions, as well as marketing or promotion activities.

Customer postcodes can be quickly and easily loaded in MVPLUS, where they will be geocoded and turned into a point on a map, which can be visualised and analysed as required.

Watch below to understand how MVPLUS can enable you to understand where your customers are.

Determine How Far Customers Travel to Each of Your Sites

Observing how far your customers travel to your sites is key in evaluating the viability of new locations, estimating cannibalisation, and understanding the audience new locations could reach.

If you know which site in which a customer is associated with, MVPLUS can instantly calculate customer-to-site drivetimes. From this, you can create drivetime catchments around current and proposed sites to understand the geodemographic characteristics.

The video below shows how to quickly learn how far each of your customers travel to your sites, and how this insight can be applied to your decision making.

Establish the Nearest Store to Your Customers, Including Online Customers

Knowing the nearest store to your customers can be useful for multiple reasons, for both your instore, and online customers. You can redire ct customers when you close or relocate a site, tailor your marketing campaigns, or tailor offers and promotions based on proximity to stores, as well as understanding your different channels such as click and collect.

In MVPLUS, the proximity tool allows you to quickly find the nearest object or objects to a point, such as the nearest site to a customer. The following video demonstrates how to do this, and examples of how this analysis can be used further.

Analyse Who Your Customer Is & What Characterises Them

Understanding who your customer is, their lifestyle, age and income characteristics can be useful for targeting your marketing communications and finding look-a-like prospects.

In GMAP, geodemographics are a prominent way in which we provide or add value to our client’s data, albeit in projects or enabling them to self-serve. The CAMEO Geodemographic Classification is a key dataset we use to help our clients to understand who their customers are in the UK and internationally.

A key feature of MVPLUS is that it allows customer postcodes to be quickly loaded and tagged with a geodemographic group, or classification, to produce a profile that describes your customers in terms of age, income group and lifestyle characteristics.

Identify Where There Are More of Your Customer Types

Understanding who your customers are allows you to target more of the same types of people when considering your location planning and marketing activities, including target mailings.

In MVPLUS once you have produced a detailed profile report which identifies geodemographic groups and categories which respond to your offer, you can then use MVPLUS to locate where there are more of this type of customer. This might indicate a potential area for new site location, or where to focus your direct marketing or advertising budgets. To find out more about using geodemographics in MVPLUS, please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Get In Touch

MVPLUS is used by clients across multiple sectors, including but limited to retail, automotive, leisure, property and transport, as well as multiple functions, including Location Planning, Property, Marketing, Logistics and Finance. To find out more , or for a demo of MVPLUS please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Considering the Potential Pending Sale of Health & Beauty Retailer Boots Using GMAP’s RetailVision Data

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 11:42:43 GMT

Considering the Potential Pending Sale of Health & Beauty Retailer Boots Using GMAP’s RetailVision Data

2nd March 2022

Last week was the deadline for indicative bids for Boots, which is currently owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance. There has been much speculation as to who will take over the renowned British institution, and its 2,200 stores. The billionaire Issa brothers behind the EG Group are amongst those rumoured to be key contenders, with a takeover worth up to £10bn.

Euro Garages started as one forecourt and has grown into the EG Group. In recent years, the EG Group has seen exponential growth with the acquisition of several major UK brands. The EG Group, with the backing of TDR Capital, purchased Asda for £6.8 billion in 2020. A few months later they acquired fast food chain Leon Restaurants for £100m and Cooplands (CS Food Group Holdings) within the same year. It is thought that the acquisition of Boots would have huge opportunity for integration within Asda stores.

Boots is a British household name, which was founded in Nottingham in 1849 and remains head quartered in Nottinghamshire. We have looked at the latest version of our RetailVision dataset to evaluate the current position Boots holds in the UK Health & Beauty retail landscape.

Health & Beauty

The Health & Beauty category has an estimated total in-store spend of £18 billion across major retailers annually. Overall, throughout the pandemic Health & Beauty was one of the few categories which experienced growth. The year-on-year revenue spend on Health & Beauty increased by 10.6%. This was likely exacerbated further by the fact that pharmacies, which account for many of the key brands in the Health & Beauty retail category, were classed as “essential retail” so remained open. Throughout Covid self-care and well-being became the focus for many of us, as people had more time of their hands and spending more time at home during a health crisis, which could have also been a contributing factor to the increase in Health & Beauty revenue spend.

Spend on Health & Beauty was 1.4% less in Q4 2021 than Q3 2021. This could have been due to multiple factors, including the fact that Q3 was the first period since the pandemic began in which most Covid restrictions were lifted across the UK which enhanced consumer confidence. The emergence of the South African Omicron variant in late November meant that caution around Covid returned, and many shoppers chose to stay away from the retail hotspots throughout December to ensure they were safe to see their families at Christmas. Figure 1 reiterates this as there was a return to out-of-town retail. Retail Park spend increased by 2.3% whilst Shopping District and Street Centre Types observed decreases of 1.9% and 2.4% respectively. This corresponds with what was witnessed throughout the rest of the pandemic.

Figure 1

The UK Health & Beauty Retailer: Boots

According to the RetailVision Points dataset, which contains retail location data for over 800 brands across the UK, there are approximately 7,500 stores nationwide across 37 brands, that occupy approximately 27,000,000 m² of retail floorspace. There is no question that Boots is the leading UK Health & Beauty retailer; as they account for around 30% of the total stores and occupy 60% of Health & Beauty floorspace (see Figure 2). Superdrug, the brand with the second highest total floorspace, has approximately 4 times less floorspace than Boots. In terms of store count, Lloyds Pharmacy and Well Pharmacy have the 2nd and 3rd highest number of stores, respectively. Lloyds have under half the number of outlets Boots does, whilst Well has less than a third.

Figure 2

The Location Strategy of Boots

If EG Group do acquire Boots, what would their location presence look like? From Figures 3 and 4, Boots over-index in Shopping Districts compared to the category average. 46% of Boots’ stores are in Shopping Districts compared to 27% of their competitors. However, Boots under-index in Retail Parks which is interestingly one of the Centre Type’s which has been experiencing growth throughout the pandemic, as established in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Looking at Figure 5, demonstrates the location strategy and store size by region, by looking at the count of stores by region and average floorspace. There is a clear regional variation. Whilst, unsurprisingly, London has the highest count of stores these are on average much smaller stores with smaller footprints. On the other hand, Wales has the highest average floorspace across much fewer stores.

Figure 5

Looking at Boots’ revenue performance compared to its competitors in Figure 6, they have a higher Sales per m² than their next biggest competitor, Superdrug. On average, they approximately sell £700 per m² which is approximately £200 per m² below the average. If EG Group are to buy Boots, can they get the average sales by floorspace above the average?

Figure 6

We took the data used in this blog from the latest version of our RetailVision Dashboard Tool. With our interactive dashboard, which is updated quarterly, you can quickly visualise and analyse the UK retail landscape. Figure 7 shows how you can quickly understand and analyse a brand’s location strategy. This could help you with multiple business initiatives, for instance quickly summarise your competitor’s location strategy or look at that of any of your affinity brands that you know you align well with.

Figure 7

Get In Touch

The RetailVision Dashboard Tool has numerous capabilities. For example, it can also be used to compare Retail Centres, Trade Zones and Super Trade Zones nationally, or drill down to specific areas, centre types or categories. To find out more about the RetailVision Points store location dataset, RetailVision Destinations, or the RetailVision Dashboard Tool, get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Comparing 2019 to 2021 Vehicle Transactions – Covid-19 Impacts & Growth of Battery Electric Vehicles

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 15:46:39 GMT

Comparing 2019 to 2021 Vehicle Transactions – Covid-19 Impacts & Growth of Battery Electric Vehicles

15th February 2022

It’s no secret that the Automotive industry has seen a massive impact from COVID-19. With the country in lockdown for pro-longed periods, and working from home becoming the new norm, it’s safe to say that over the last 24 months we’ve been using our cars less than ever. At the same time, the country is becoming more environmentally conscious and with ICE (internal combustion engine) sales ceasing in the UK in 2030, BEV (battery electric vehicle) adoption is accelerating.

The question is, how is the BEV market changing in comparison to the wider new car market in this challenging climate? At GMAP we have used the latest DVLA new car registrations data to investigate how the relative changes to the BEV market compared to the wider new car market.

Total New Car Transactions

Using our DVLA new car transactions data we looked at three individual time periods: full year 2019, full year 2020, full year 2021. This was to assess a baseline value of the new car transactions market, the impact of COVID-19 on the new car market, and how the market was then recovering after the numerous challenges posed by COVID and Brexit.

Total new car transactions witnessed a sharp decline between 2019 and 2020, with the 2020 new car transaction total only reaching around 70% of the volume seen in 2019. This was inevitably driven by COVID-19 with a high proportion of 2020 being spent in a national lockdown. As the demand for new vehicles slowed, manufacturers started to scale back their operations and produce less vehicles. Not all manufacturers slowed production by choice, however. A shortage of vital components used in vehicle production caused factories and production lines to close for weeks at a time. This in turn, had a knock-on effect leading in to 2021.

New car transactions in 2021 painted a very similar picture to that seen in 2020. The market figures show a minimal recovery of just under 2% growth in 2021, compared to 2020. This is still bleak in comparison to the figures seen in 2019. Although this lack of recovery might be partly due to decreased demand from economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic and Brexit, a large portion is attributed to lack of supply from manufacturers.

Vehicle Supply Issues

It has been well documented that there is a global shortage of semiconductor chips. This has been caused by increased demand for consumer electronics (laptops, smartphones, tablets etc.), coupled with decreased production due to closures of factories and supply chains. These chips are vital in the production of new vehicles and whilst vehicle manufactures have taken steps to mitigate this problem, it is estimated that the semi-conductor shortage may impact automotive products throughout 2022, and possibly into 2023.

Used Car Transactions

One consequence of these supply chain issues constraining new car supply has been the knock-on effect to used car prices. As new vehicles have faced production issues, the demand for used vehicles has increased, leading to inflated used car prices throughout 2021. Online used car marketplace, CarGurus, stated that the price of their most popular used car models rose by over 26% between January 2021 and January 2022. It has been reported that used car sales are increasing over 4 times faster than used car stock levels. With demand outpacing supply at such a high rate there is no surprise that used car prices are on the rise. This increase is projected to last into the later months of 2022.

With this increase in used car prices in mind, GMAP investigated the used car transactions data for vehicles aged up to 10 years, using the same three time periods mentioned previously.

*Vehicles up to 10 years old

Total used car transactions declined between 2019 and 2020, with the 2020 volume reaching only 80% of the total 2019 volume. It is interesting to note that this decline is significantly lower than that seen in the new car transactions market which potentially further highlights the production issues faced from COVID-19. Whilst total new car transactions witnessed a minimal increase between 2020 and 2021, used car transactions had a much larger rebound. Our data shows that used car transactions for vehicles up to 10 years old increased by almost 14% in 2021 compared to 2020. Whilst the figure for vehicles in this age band is still below the 2019 volume, transactions have shown a significant increase despite the inflated vehicle price. It will be interesting to see how the used car market changes as new vehicle production returns to pre-COVID levels.

ICE vs BEV:

We have discussed the total new car market, but how has the BEV market fared in comparison? BEV market performance is a stark contrast to the rest of the automotive market. Our data shows that despite the current challenges, the BEV market has consistently grown, and quickly! In 2019, new BEV transactions made up less than 2% of the total new transaction market. In 2020 this grew to over 6% and in 2021 it almost doubled its share to form over 11% of the total new car transactions. In contrast, non-BEV vehicles are showing a steady downward trend.

The total non-BEV new car transactions in 2020 was only around 67% of the volume compared to that in 2019. In 2021 this decreased further, albeit at a much slower rate, to around 65% of the volume compared to 2019. The growth of the BEV new transactions market is staggering with over a 5-fold increase from 2019 to 2021. This seemingly played a vital role in the market growth from 2020 to 2021. Whilst the number of non-BEV new transactions reduced from 2020 to 2021, the large growth from BEV caused the total market to increase in this same period. Without the growth of pure electric vehicles, we would have likely witnessed a further decline in the number of total new car transactions.

Why are BEV’s becoming more popular?

Buying a new car is a large purchase; for most people it will be the second largest purchase after a house. BEV’s are notoriously expensive since they are still relatively new technology and are in their infancy, when compared with traditional ICE vehicles. That said, the price of BEV’s is reducing, making them more accessible. Cheaper running costs and servicing (as after all, they have far fewer parts), coupled with improved battery technology is making BEV’s a more attractive proposition. Range anxiety is becoming less of a concern thanks to rapid charging technology and a wider network of charging infrastructure. These developments, coupled with the 2030 legislation, should provide the platform for an exponential increase in BEV adoption in the UK.

The key question is, how fast will the BEV market grow under less turbulent conditions?

Get In Touch

If you would like to learn more about our DVLA vehicle registrations data products and how they can add value to your organisation, then please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Exploring Pizza Provision in the UK for National Pizza Day

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 10:29:13 GMT

Exploring Pizza Provision in the UK for National Pizza Day

9th February 2022

Today, 9th February, is National Pizza Day! Until the early 1900s Pizza was Italy’s well-kept secret, as it was little known beyond Naples’ borders. Immigrants to New York in the 1940’s introduced America to Pizza, which quickly spread across America and the rest of the world.

Since the first Pizza Hut opened in 1958, an abundance of restaurant and takeaway chains have opened worldwide. From traditional Italian Pizzas to American deep-dish Chicago style Pizza to the recent trend of Sourdough Pizzas, you don’t have to travel far in the UK to get yourself a Pizza! This has been enabled the major UK pizza brands including the likes of Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Dominos, Pizza Express, as well as newer UK brands such as Franco Manca, Pizza Pilgrims, and Rudy’s Pizza who have driven a pizza revival in recent years.

We have used our LeisureVision Points location data to explore the UK Pizza provision! We found that 5% of all UK restaurants and 10% of all UK fast food outlets are Pizza restaurants or takeaways.

Looking at the geography of Pizza in the UK in our MVPLUS software, we found that Leeds is the ultimate hotspot for Pizza, followed by Birmingham and Westminster. Westminster has the highest number of Pizza restaurants, followed by Bristol and Edinburgh. Leeds is the also the hotspot for Pizza takeaways, followed by Birmingham and Nottingham.

Hotspot Map of all Pizza Venues

Hotspot Map of all Pizza Restaurants

Hotspot Map of for Pizza Takeaways

Top 20 Locations for all Pizza Venues

1. Leeds

2. Birmingham

3. Westminster

4. Bristol

5. Nottingham

6. Edinburgh

7. Manchester

8. Newcastle Upon Tyne

9. Wandsworth

10. Islington

11. Glasgow

12. Hackney

13. Tower Hamlets

14. Sheffield

15. Camden

16. Cardiff

17. Croydon

18. York

19. Brighton And Hove

20. Derby

Top 20 Locations for all Pizza Restaurants

1. Westminster

2. Bristol

3. Edinburgh

4. Manchester

5. Wandsworth

6. Camden

7. Kensington And Chelsea

8. Birmingham

9. Islington

10. Hackney

11. Newham

12. Glasgow

13. Brighton And Hove

14. Tower Hamlets

15. Southwark

16. Hammersmith And Fulham

17. Leeds

18. Sheffield

19. Lambeth

20. Croydon

Top 20 Locations for all Pizza Takeaways

1. Leeds

2. Birmingham

3. Nottingham

4. Newcastle Upon Tyne

5. Bristol

6. Edinburgh

7. Manchester

8. Derby

9. York

10. Wandsworth

11. Sheffield

12. Islington

13. Cardiff

14. Glasgow

15. Croydon

16. Reading

17. Wakefield

18. Tower Hamlets

19. Leicester

20. Hackney

Leeds: The Ultimate Hotspot For Pizza Provision

At GMAP we are not surprised that Leeds is the pizza hotspot! We have an abundance of options on our doorstep in which we can get ourselves a tasty pizza. Pizza Fell, Simpatico, Poco, and Dough Boys Pizza at Belgrave Music Hall are just a few of the GMAP team’s favourite Leeds local pizza brands. The question is, what topping?

Get In Touch

Get in touch to find out more about how our LeisureVision leisure location data or MVPLUS tool can be used to inform your decision-making! Also discover how our location planning consultancy can support your business.

Veganuary: Locations with the Highest Vegan Provision in the UK?

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 11:56:40 GMT

Veganuary: Locations with the Highest Vegan Provision in the UK

31st January 2022

Veganism has become increasingly popular in the past 10 years as people look to adapt their diets and food choice to help end animal farming, protect the planet and improve their general health. As more people have turned to veganism, retailers, supermarkets, and the hospitality sector have responded. Better access to tasty vegan foods has in turn meant that more people are attracted to the plant-based diet.

Post-Christmas, many of us enter the new year looking for a diet that doesn’t consist of cheese, leftovers, chocolate, and alcohol. With the increasing popularity of Veganism and the offerings available to us, it is no surprise that Veganuary has become an increasingly attractive way for people to detox after Christmas, as well as take up the challenge to try being vegan!

Last year, over 580,000 people signed up to Veganuary’s 2021 campaign in over 200 countries and territories. In addition, 439 new vegan products were launched, and 154 new vegan options were added in key chain restaurants in Veganuary 2021.

To get in the Veganuary spirit, we have looked at our LeisureVision data in MVPLUS to establish where in the UK has the best vegan provision!

Hotspot Map of the UK Vegan Restaurants, Cafes and Fast-Food Outlets

Top 20 Vegan Locations

1. Hackney

2. Camden

3. Tower Hamlets

4. Glasgow City

5. Newcastle upon Tyne

6. Brighton and Hove

7. Manchester

8. Norwich

9. Lambeth

10. Islington

11. Westminster

12. Cardiff

13. Hammersmith and Fulham

14. Bristol, City of

15. City of Edinburgh

16. Liverpool

17. Southwark

18. Waltham Forest

19. Birmingham

20. Nottingham

It is no surprise that London is a key hotspot for vegan food, with 8 of the top 20 locations in the capital. Outside of London, Glasgow and Newcastle are the 4th and 5th top vegan locations, followed by Brighton and Hove, Manchester, and Norwich.

Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Islington, Cardiff, and Hammersmith and Fulham have the highest number of vegan restaurants. The locations with the most vegan cafes are Hackney, Newcastle, Tower Hamlets and Glasgow. Whereas Camden, Newcastle, Manchester, and Hackney have the most vegan takeaway outlets.

Vegan and Vegan-Friendly Brands

Many vegan restaurants, cafes and fast-food outlets are run by independents. However, with the popularity of veganism, vegan and vegan-friendly chains are growing. The first Veggie Pret opened in London as a pop-up experiment back in 2016, and now have 10 locations with ambitions to continue to expand the Veggie Pret estate. In addition, there are more and more UK high street chains, from Costa to Wetherspoons to Wagamama, that are offering vegan options to their menus that are Vegan Society Trademarked.

There are many brands that have started as independents and have expanded to multiple cities. Neat Burger has 6 locations in London with a 7th location opening in Canary Wharf soon. Oowee Vegan , another vegan fast-food brand opened their first location in Bristol, and now has 6 locations across Bristol, London, Brighton, and Manchester. Purezza opened in Brighton in 2015, making it the first vegan pizzeria in the UK. Since, it has opened locations in Bristol, Camden and Manchester. It seems to be that London, Brighton and Bristol are catalysts for vegan brands.

Vegan and Vegan-Friendly Leeds

Although Leeds is not one of the top locations for vegan food provision, there are several vegan and vegan-friendly brands that members of the GMAP team are big fans of! When Humpit opened in the Leeds Corn Exchange in 2014 their hummus and falafel became number one in Leeds on TripAdvisor within 8 weeks. Although sadly their original Corn Exchange location has closed, they now have 6 locations – including 1 in the Leeds University Union just 0.4 miles or a 9-minute walk from the GMAP office!

Bundobust , a vegetarian Indian restaurant and casual craft beer bar, opened in Leeds in 2014, and now has 2 sites in Manchester and 1 in Liverpool. Döner Summer , which specialises in Vegan Junk Food and cocktails, originally opened in Spark York, and has since opened locations in Leeds, Hull and Manchester. Another vegan Leeds recommendation is Manjit’s Kitchen , located in the Leeds Kirkgate Market and on Kirkstall Road, and specialises in vegetarian Punjabi street food.

Get In Touch

Congratulations to anyone who’s completed Veganuary! Please get in touch to find out about how GMAP’s LeisureVision leisure location dataset or location planning consultancy could help you support your business.

Checkout-Free Supermarkets, the Future of UK Grocery?

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 16:03:20 GMT

Checkout-Free Supermarkets, the Future of UK Grocery?

25th January 2022

The race for the checkout-free supermarket is on. When Amazon Fresh pioneered checkout-free grocery shops in March 2021, the UK supermarket landscape changed. By the end of last year, Tesco and Sainsbury’s were trialling checkout-free formats, whilst Morrisons were testing the concept with its employees at its Bradford head office. Last week, Aldi opened their first checkout-free supermarket in Greenwich, London.

In October last year, Tesco converted one of their Express stores in High Holborn to a checkout-free store known as GetGo, as a one-store trial. In November, Sainsbury’s launched a similar concept using Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology in their convenience store in High Holborn. Whilst Amazon also opened their 7th Amazon Fresh store at Holborn Chancery Lane in November.

Holborn is therefore the official pioneer of checkout-free retail in London, as the grocery retailers look to provide local busy workers in The City of London with fast, efficient, and convenient shopping that focuses on on-the-go food and drink.

Looking to our RetailVision data, the Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Amazon Fresh checkout-less outlets all fall within the same Retail Centre; “Holborn (Camden)”, which is a "Shopping District", with a “Mass+” status and is within a “Secondary London Trade Zone”. Other Amazon Fresh outlets are also located in RetailVision Centres with the same retail profile as those in Holborn.

In comparison, the Aldi store, although still located in a Secondary London Trade Zone, is in a Retail Park in Greenwich, which is anchored by value stores, giving it a RetailVision Value+ status, which is a typical centre profile for an Aldi store.

If Tesco and Sainsbury’s were to consider growing their checkout-free propositions in similar locations in London, there are 37 other London RetailVision Centres with a Shopping District Centre Type and Mass+ status that fall within Secondary London Trade Zones . Sainsbury’s have existing stores in 7 of these Centres, could these be their next target for the Just Walk Out technology? Tesco, however, don’t have any existing stores in these Centres and therefore indicate potential Centres for new store locations.

Amazon Fresh’s cashless supermarkets have altered the UK grocery market as we know it and the existing supermarkets and discounters are taking action, with Tesco, Sainsburys and Aldi all opening their own checkout-free supermarkets. It will be interesting to see how shoppers respond, could 2022 be a pivotal year for UK grocery? Will these key UK supermarkets, along with Morrisons, make the decision to roll out this technology further? Will they focus around London’s convenience shoppers looking for on-the-go food and drink; or will Aldi pioneer the growth of this concept in larger-format stores outside of central London?

What do you think? Get in touch to let us know, or to find out more about our RetailVision dataset .

GMAP's 12 Favourite Food & Drinks of Christmas

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 10:26:49 GMT

GMAP's 12 Food & Drinks of Christmas

21st December 2021

Last year, the GMAP team each contributed their all-time favourite maps in ‘GMAP’s 12 Maps of Christmas’. This year, as we remain a 12 person team we felt we had to take advantage of our current size and so here we have ‘GMAP’s 12 Favourite Food & Drinks of Christmas’. We asked each of the team to name their favourite food and drink, to which we got a range of responses both in length and quality. Read on to find out more about our favourite food and drinks, where they come from and some other facts, we hope you enjoy!

1. Joe Murphy, Senior Consultant

Food: Turkey

Drink: Port

“I love Turkey so much, I eat it all year round”

Turkey is native to North America, and has been eaten as a meat since the 15th century. Prior to the 20th century, turkeys were so abundant in the wild they were eaten year-round (just as Joe does!) and it was pork ribs that were the most common holiday food. Today, turkey is traditional to Thanksgiving dinners in the US and Canada, and at Christmas dinners elsewhere across the world. Turkey as a Christmas food spread throughout Britain in the 17th Century.

Port, from the Douro region of northern Portugal, became a popular drink in the UK following the 1700s war with France which deprived the English of French wine. Due to English investments in importing Port, it became so affordable that people of all classes could afford a bottle for Christmas!

2. Alice Thomson, Head of Client Delivery

Food: Honey Roasted Peanuts

Drink: None, “more of a summer drinker”

“My favourite food is honey roasted peanuts… not sure I have a favourite drink. I personally really dislike all of the Christmassy drinks like Baileys, port etc. more of a summer drinker!”

Not a typical Christmas food, but nonetheless served in many households over the holidays often with a drink or two… The concept for honey roasted peanuts originated from a food scientist at North Carolina State University who discovered roasting legumes, and coating them with glad whilst the nuts are between 160 and 350 degrees, resulted in a less sticky product that remained fresh for longer. This patent was sold to Anheuser-Busch, a Missouri-based American brewing company which is now home to brands including Budweiser and Stella Artois.

3. Coralie Mace, Consultant

Food: Croissants

Drink: Champagne

“My favourite Christmas morning tradition is champagne and croissants”

Coralie is a fan of the perfect French breakfast, or so it would seem… Champagne is of course from the Champagne wine region. However, Croissants which are most often associated with France, are from Austria! Perhaps not a typical Christmas tradition, but one I’m sure many could get on board with.

4. Limei Zheng, Technical Consultant

Food: Minced Pies

Drink: Mulled Wine

Two very typical, yet reliable, Christmas food and drink traditions! Mince Pies originated in the UK and were originally a savoury pie. In the Tudor period they were rectangular shaped like a manger and often had a pastry baby Jesus on the lid…. It was not until the late Victorian period and early 20th Century that mince pies dropped the meat and had all fruit fillings. Mulled Wine was created by the Romans in the 2nd century who would heat wine to stay warm in winter. As the Romans conquered Europe across the next century, their love for mulled wine spread across their empire.

5. Rob Chew, Consultant

Food: Stollen

Drink: Beer

“Stollen and drink would be beer but I don’t have a favourite”

Stollen came from Germany in the 15th Century, for anyone else who loves stollen as much as Rob, the Stollen Season apparently runs from 1st November to 31st December annually, and the city of Dresden runs an annual Stollen Festival! In 2010, supermarket Lidl won the record for the world’s longest stollen, which measured over 70m long, according to the Guinness Book of World Records!

6. Matt Cawcutt, Director

Food: Chocolate Ginger

Drink: Snowballs

“Chocolate Ginger and Snowballs (Advocaat, Lime and Lemonade)”

No official history or origin could be found about chocolate ginger. However, Snowballs are apparently of UK origin despite Advocaat coming from The Netherlands. They were invented in the 1940s but were made popular in the 1970s. According to British Food History, you should also include Brandy in your Snowball.

Snowball Recipe (per person)

25 ml (1 shot) Advocaat, 12.5 ml (a ½ shot) brandy, Juice ¼ of a lime, Ice, 75 ml lemonade and a thin slice of lime to garnish.

Pour the Advocaat, brandy and lime juice in a cocktail shaker and add plenty of ice. Shake well and strain into glasses. Add a single ice cube per glass and top up with a little lemon (it will fizz up!). Stir and garnish with the slice of lime.

7. Louis Judge, Consultant

Food: Lincolnshire Pork Pies and Sausage Rolls

Drink: Bourbon Whiskey

“My favourite food(s) is usually the meal in the evening of Christmas Day after we've had our lunch. My parents get fantastic pork pie and sausage rolls from their local butchers using local Lincolnshire pork and we have these with turkey sandwiches and thickly cut ham. My favourite drink around Christmas time (and most of the year) is a Bourbon whiskey, something like Bulleit Bourbon from Kentucky, USA”

8. Oli Cook , Senior Consultant

Food: Brillat-Savarin cheese, Red cabbage cooked with an apple, Lebkuchen

Drink: Bollinger Grande Année, La Gioiosa prosecco, Negroni, Multiple flavours of Soplica Polish Vodkas

“Every Christmas I have a Brillat-Savarin cheese. It’s really light and creamy, and feels very luxurious to eat. For years my Christmas tradition has been to go to a very nice cheesemonger in St. James’s for it, Paxton & Whitfield, just near the back entrance to Fortnum & Mason’s. This year I’ve noticed it’s even in Waitrose, so I’ll need to check that one out before the big day to decide whose is better…

Red cabbage cooked with an apple, Christmassy spices and a large amount of butter is also one of my favourite things. It makes boring meats such as turkey really tasty, and is also great with bubble and squeak the next day. I don’t think there’s any need to bother with cranberry sauce if you have red cabbage. One cabbage makes tonnes, and you can keep reheating it for days until it runs out.

Lebkuchen, especially the ones with apricot jam inside. They’re like a Christmas version of Jaffa Cakes. I’m getting obsessed with anything with apricot jam in for some reason, now I’m getting older.

I’ll have a couple of bottles of Bollinger Grande Année, but these are only served at the right moment when I know everyone will appreciate it. You can really taste the difference with a proper champagne, but it’s very expensive. Once everyone else’s champagne has been exhausted, I will have a cupboard full of the gold La Gioiosa prosecco to get stuck into. They have an organic version in Majestic’s this year, so I might give that a try. And it’s technically impossible to get a hangover from organic wine.

I like to sip negroni later on watching TV, and it goes quite well with mince pies.

For new year, there will be a selection of different flavours of Soplica Polish vodkas. Quince is by far my favourite. A few shots of these and everyone will be dancing”

9. Alice Goddard, Consultant

Food: Stuffing

Drink: Baileys

“As a (now lapsed) vegetarian teenager, self-deprived of pigs in blankets I turned to the next best thing, stuffing. My favourite drink is slightly controversial as I know that most people have a love or hate relationship with Baileys. My friends are obsessed with the chocolate edition, and M&S last year brought out an excellent salted caramel brownie one which isn’t as sickly as it sounds. Also, I would choose a Baby Guinness shot over a tequila or sambuca any day!”

The origin of stuffing is not very clear, but references date back to the first century AD where meats including Chicken, Rabbit, Pigs and Doormouse were stuffed with herbs and bread. Not very vegetarian! Baileys Irish Cream was the first Irish cream on the market, which was invented in Dublin in 1971. Although it didn’t start as a Christmas drink, it has become a festive favourite.

10. Neil Carr, Technical Consultant

Food: Nothing Specific

Drink: Tea

When Neil initially told us Tea was his only Christmas drink of choice, there were some laughs but we were not surprised as Neil is known for his love of Yorkshire Tea. However, little did we know that Tea has a historical association with Christmas! In the 1800s, as Christmas was one of the few days off work for many of the working and middle classes in Britain, and it was often spent in the pub. However, to address this tradition that resulted in drunken husband’s getting violent and spending their weekly family income in the pub, Christmas Eve tea parties were held. One of the first was at Preston’s Cloth Hall. Since, Christmas Afternoon Teas have become a popular Christmas activity.

11. Jonathan Moore (also known as Max), Technical Consultant

Food: Butter or Minced Pies

Drink: Bloody Mary

“My favourite food is Butter, if that’s not allowed then Minced Pies - If I can’t have butter, then a mince pie is my 2nd favourite Christmas food. I do tend to have them all year round though. My favourite drink is a Bloody Mary”

*we didn’t allow Max to have butter, but it was noted that a number of supermarkets have brought out butter shaped like Christmas Trees.

The French bartender Fernand Petiot claimed to have invented the Bloody Mary in 1921. He was working at the New York Bar in Paris at the time, which later became Harry's New York Bar, a frequent Paris hangout for Ernest Hemingway and other American migrant. However, New York's 21 Club claims that it was invented in the 1930s by bartender Henry Zbikiewicz, who was charged with mixing Bloody Marys.

12. John Chesworth, Director

Food: Pressed Ox Tongue

Drink: Bank's Bitter

“For me Christmas is all about family traditions and nostalgia so I am going to pick something that reminds me of childhood family Christmas parties. Every year my Grandma would press an Ox Tongue which went down a treat with the cold buffet and intriguing home pickles served up on Boxing Day, after our family, cousins, aunts and uncles got back from the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre panto. It is also quite amusing watching somebody try Ox Tongue for the first time as it tends to provoke a pretty immediate love or hate reaction. Then there is probably no better drink to wash the buffet down with than a bottle of Bank’s Bitter. Happy days, best wishes to all for the Christmas holidays!”

We would like you wish you a very Merry Christmas from the GMAP team. To all our friends and clients, thank you for your support throughout 2021 and we look forward to 2022! Please get in touch to find out more about what we do, or if you have any favourite Christmas foods or drinks to share with us.

Where is the UK’s Christmas Party Hotspot?

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 14:50:03 GMT

Where is the UK’s Christmas Party Hotspot?

6th December 2021

The 2021 Christmas Party season in well and truly is full swing. Whilst last year, the GMAP team took to our screens and had a Christmas Party over Teams that consisted of Wine & Cheese by Friends of Ham, a Leeds favourite, and a virtual magician. This year, we were able to celebrate together in person in our home city of Leeds in true GMAP fashion, with a Christmas meal, followed by bowling at the Roxy Lanes, and inevitably turning to the night out epicentre of Leeds, Call Lane.

It’s safe to say that, if GMAP’s Christmas Party is anything to go by, then the Christmas Party season very much favours the Food & Beverage locations, with some Competitive Socialising to satisfy the more competitive members of the team. In response to this, we have examined our LeisureVision location data to look at where could be the Christmas Party hotspots in the UK.

To do this we used our recently launched LeisureVision product. The launch of LeisureVision was in recognition of how leisure-based consumption is increasingly prevalent portion of consumer spending, read our blog Launching LeisureVision to find out more . LeisureVision consists of over 250,000+ leisure location data points in the UK within the Food & Beverage (F&B), Entertainment, Competitive Socialising and Sport & Fitness sectors:

Food & Beverage (F&B)

Entertainment

Theatre, Cinema, Stadium, Gambling, Bingo, etc.

Competitive Socialising

Bowling, Crazy Golf, Escape Room, Trampolining, etc.

Sport & Fitness

The map above shows the top 10 Food & Beverage hotspots in the UK. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Westminster is the top Food & Beverage Destination in the UK, followed by Leeds, Birmingham, and Edinburgh , which all have over 2,000 Food & Beverage locations. Below we have looked at this by three of the key categories of locations attended on Christmas parties: Bars, Nightclubs and Restaurants.

Westminster, Manchester and Leeds have the highest density of Bars in the UK. By far, Birmingham is the Nightclub hotspot in the UK, followed by Westminster and Bristol. Westminster, once again had the highest number of Restaurants, followed by Edinburgh and Birmingham.

Taking into account the total number of Nightclub, Bar and Restaurant locations concludes that, if every Christmas Party is as food and alcohol driven as GMAP’s typical celebration, Westminster is the top Christmas Party destination followed by Edinburgh, Birmingham, Camden and Leeds.

If you are like some of our game-loving GMAPers, the highlight of the Christmas Party is always something that involves the opportunity to win. The Competitive Socialising hotspots are less London centric. Birmingham is the ultimate destination of choice for Competitive Socialising, followed by Edinburgh and Oxford .

When combining the Competitive Socialising locations, to the total number of Nightclubs, Bars and Restaurants, Westminster remains the top Christmas Party destination , followed by Edinburgh, Birmingham, Camden and Leeds.

Albeit virtually, in your homes, or in person, we hope you enjoy the Christmas Party season. This is just a brief introduction into some of the insights captured by LeisureVision, to find out more please get in touch or visit our LeisureVision webpag e for more information.

Using RetailVision Footfall Data to Explore Covid Shopping Behaviours in Yorkshire & The Humber

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 09:41:08 GMT

Using RetailVision Footfall Data to Explore Covid Shopping Behaviours in Yorkshire & The Humber

23rd November 2021

How did Covid, imposed restrictions, and lockdowns, really influence our shopping behaviours? This is a question the GMAP team, and our clients have been eager to understand.

Top level headlines can tell us the overall trends such as the boost to online sales, and the successes in the DIY and Grocery sectors, but we wanted to explore what really happened on the ground and understand the micro level impacts and trends which impacted, and continue to impact, our clients.

This is a challenge we set to one of our University of Leeds Geography placement students, who we worked with to extract detailed Centre-level information from our re-vamped RetailVision dataset for Yorkshire and the Humber.

RetailVision Bringing Footfall Data to Life

RetailVision has recently been transformed to include Centre-level geo-mobility footfall data to capture the temporal market dynamics, and it was quick to see that some interesting trends were evident across the Centres, when comparing rates of footfall during pre-Covid to Covid time periods.

The Big Lockdown Day Out, to the Retail Park

Unsurprisingly, the largest positive change in footfall was found at an accessible, parking friendly location, Birstall Shopping Park, which is also anchored by an IKEA. A trend also found at Drakehouse Retail Park, a retail park with similar retailers, just on the outskirts of Sheffield and Gatepark on the outskirts of Rotherham.

Figure 1: Did IKEA drive footfall to Birstall Shopping Park in Leeds?

The Rise of the Suburban Shopping Districts

Interestingly, there was also a large positive change in footfall in some of the smaller shopping districts in Yorkshire, such as Castleford, Heckmondwike and Barnsley. A sharp contrast to their larger counterparts, who were the RetailVision Centres with the largest negative footfall change, Leeds, Sheffield, and York shopping districts. The ‘Shopping District’ Centres experienced distinctive footfall rates which were dependant on their location type, with clear trends of suburban ‘Shopping Districts’ gaining growth in footfall, compared to the ‘Shopping Districts’ in large urban areas and CBDs who saw negative change.

We Did Like to Be Beside the Seaside

The analysis also considered the distance people travelled during pre-Covid to Covid time periods, and once again found strong consumer trends which supported the theories that the ‘work from home’ guidance and restrictions kept people away from the urban areas, and when they did travel the coastal areas saw the greatest traffic, as we all remember from the pictures of swarms of people crowding beaches. Coastal RetailVision Centres saw the greatest increase in average distance travelled, with Murray Street in Filey seeing the biggest increase. Whereas many key business industrial estates, and the motorway service stations and transport hubs that serve the key cities saw the greatest declines in distance travelled.

Figure 2: Murray Street, Filey

Figure 3: Filey seafront

Building Foundations Over Wearing Foundation

The Centre product mix of the Centres most significantly impacted by footfall change supports the reports that consumers were much more actively visiting Centres anchored by homeware and DIY, garden centres, convenience, and supermarkets, whereas the Centres with the largest negative change in footfall were, on average, around 40% fashion and beauty stores.

Figure 4: Increase in popularity in Homeware, DIY and Garden Centres

RetailVision Insights of the Shopping Behaviours in Yorkshire & The Humber

GMAP’s RetailVision data indicates real strong trends of consumer behaviour as a result of Covid, behaviours previously speculated but not evidenced. Using real devise mobility data measured at RetailVision Centres level allows accurate comparisons and conclusions to be drawn.

RetailVision confirmed the notion that Covid resulted in the people of Yorkshire focusing their spend in specific areas, notably away from Fashion, probably because who cares what you’re wearing if you have nowhere to go? While shoppers also actively avoided enclosed spaces, such shopping malls, favouring out-of-town retail parks for their DIY and grocery needs. Whereas the working from home guidance manifested in an increase in very localised shopping habits. Yet, lockdowns and restrictions also resulted in consumers taking to the coast when they did feel the need to escape home, creating patterns and levels of footfall not seen pre-pandemic.

How Can I Find Out More?

To find out more please visit our RetailVision webpage , or get in touch at info@gmap.com

Launching LeisureVision

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 11:17:55 GMT

Launching LeisureVision

3rd November 2021

At GMAP , we have increasingly recognised the increasing prevalence of Leisure-based consumption and requirement for location intelligence data , software, and consultancy from leisure operators. In response to this demand, we have developed our first Leisure proposition, LeisureVision! LeisureVision can be delivered as a standalone dataset, as part of a consultative project, or can be further brought to life through our MVPLUS mapping tool.

Why have GMAP created LeisureVision?

Leisure-based retail has become an increasingly prevalent portion of consumer spending . At the start of the millennium, a day out mainly involved a key shopping centre or retail destination, perhaps followed by a meal or cinema trip. Today leisure is often the key driver of the day out. Bars, pubs, cinemas, as well as less conventional leisure activities such as venues to engage in Axe Throwing, are the destination and often ‘the shop’ is somewhere to visit on the way, or only one factor in a day out.

The shift towards increased focused in leisure consumption has occurred in parallel to changes in the retail landscape. Prior to Covid-19, retail was going through a “Retail Apocalypse” which was only exasperated by the pandemic. From our RetailVision data we measured that in the first quarter of this year alone, almost 2,000 stores closed during lockdown ( gmap.com/retailvision-refreshed ). With the closure of retail outlets, vacancy rates have increased and the uptake of spaces by new leisure concepts has meant the retail landscape has increasingly become a retail-leisure hybrid. Both retail and leisure stakeholders need to consider both sectors for optimal location decision making.

At GMAP we recognise the importance of this leisure shift in location planning as Leisure is an adherently physical service ; you cannot buy the atmosphere that comes with a freshly poured pint online. Therefore, it is essential that leisure operators closely consider their location planning decisions. In account of this, as well as the growth in leisure-based consumption, GMAP have been increasingly providing leisure operators with insights to help them understand this ever-growing sector, as well as retailers that need to understand how their proposition sits in the changing face of consumption. Consequently, it seemed like the right time for GMAP to launch a Leisure data offering to sit alongside our existing product suite, and from this we created LeisureVision .

Leisure-based retail has become an increasingly prevalent portion of consumer spending. At the start of the millennium, a day out mainly involved a key shopping centre or retail destination, perhaps followed by a meal or cinema trip. Today leisure is often the key driver of the day out. Bars, pubs, cinemas, as well as less conventional leisure activities such as venues to engage in Axe Throwing, are the destination and often ‘the shop’ is somewhere to visit on the way, or only one factor in a day out.

The shift towards increased focused in leisure consumption has occurred in parallel to changes in the retail landscape. Prior to Covid-19, retail was going through a “Retail Apocalypse” which was only exasperated by the pandemic. From our RetailVision data we measured that in the first quarter of this year alone, almost 2,000 stores closed during lockdown ( gmap.com/retailvision-refreshed ). With the closure of retail outlets, vacancy rates have increased and the uptake of spaces by new leisure concepts has meant the retail landscape has increasingly become a retail-leisure hybrid. Both retail and leisure stakeholders need to consider both sectors for optimal location decision making.

At GMAP we recognise the importance of this leisure shift in location planning as Leisure is an adherently physical service; you cannot buy the atmosphere that comes with a freshly poured pint online. Therefore, it is essential that leisure operators closely consider their location planning decisions. In account of this, as well as the growth in leisure-based consumption, GMAP have been increasingly providing leisure operators with insights to help them understand this ever-growing sector, as well as retailers that need to understand how their proposition sits in the changing face of consumption. Consequently, it seemed like the right time for GMAP to launch a Leisure data offering to sit alongside our existing product suite, and from this we created LeisureVision.

LeisureVision is designed to help stakeholders understand the current leisure landscape to enable smarter location and business decisions.

What is LeisureVision?

LeisureVision is designed to help stakeholders understand the current leisure landscape, to enable smarter location and business decisions. LeisureVision is made up of two products, Points and Destinations.

At GMAP, we have increasingly recognised the increasing prevalence of Leisure-based consumption and requirement for location intelligence data, software, and consultancy from leisure operators. In response to this demand, we have developed our first Leisure proposition, LeisureVision! LeisureVision can be delivered as a standalone dataset, as part of a consultative project, or can be further brought to life through our MVPLUS mapping tool.

Why have GMAP created LeisureVision?

The shift towards increased focused in leisure consumption has occurred in parallel to changes in the retail landscape. Prior to Covid-19, retail was going through a “Retail Apocalypse” which was only exasperated by the pandemic. From our RetailVision data we measured that in the first quarter of this year alone, almost 2,000 stores closed during lockdown ( gmap.com/retailvision-refreshed ). With the closure of retail outlets, vacancy rates have increased and the uptake of spaces by new leisure concepts has meant the retail landscape has increasingly become a retail-leisure hybrid. Both retail and leisure stakeholders need to consider both sectors for optimal location decision making.

Leisure-based retail has become an increasingly prevalent portion of consumer spending. At the start of the millennium, a day out mainly involved a key shopping centre or retail destination, perhaps followed by a meal or cinema trip. Today leisure is often the key driver of the day out. Bars, pubs, cinemas, as well as less conventional leisure activities such as venues to engage in Axe Throwing, are the destination and often ‘the shop’ is somewhere to visit on the way, or only one factor in a day out.

LeisureVision is designed to help stakeholders understand the current leisure landscape to enable smarter location and business decisions.

What is LeisureVision?

LeisureVision Points is a competitively price dataset of over 250,000+ leisure locations across the UK. Points is a comprehensive dataset of locations across 4 product types including Food & Beverage (F&B), Entertainment, Competitive Socialising and Sport & Fitness. Each Point is also assigned to one of over 100+ categories. The attributes associated with each point are: Name, Brand, Location, Product & Category.

LeisureVision Points

LeisureVision Destinations

LeisureVision Points is a competitively price dataset of over 250,000+ leisure locations across the UK. Points is a comprehensive dataset of locations across 4 product types including Food & Beverage (F&B), Entertainment, Competitive Socialising and Sport & Fitness. Each Point is also assigned to one of over 100+ categories . The attributes associated with each point are: Name, Brand, Location, Product & Category.

Food & Beverage (F&B)

Entertainment

Theatre, Cinema, Stadium, Gambling, Bingo, etc.

Competitive Socialising

Bowling, Crazy Golf, Escape Room, Trampolining, etc.

Sport & Fitness

LeisureVision Destinations is built using Uber’s H3 Hexagons. Destinations include a count of the Points within the hexagon’s geofence, and an Opportunity Score which facilitates ‘next best’ location analysis.

Food & Beverage (F&B)

Entertainment

Theatre, Cinema, Stadium, Gambling, Bingo, etc.

Competitive Socialising

Bowling, Crazy Golf, Escape Room, Trampolining, etc.

Sport & Fitness

The shift towards increased focused in leisure consumption has occurred in parallel to changes in the retail landscape. Prior to Covid-19, retail was going through a “Retail Apocalypse” which was only exasperated by the pandemic. From our RetailVision data we measured that in the first quarter of this year alone, almost 2,000 stores closed during lockdown ( gmap.com/retailvision-refreshed ). With the closure of retail outlets, vacancy rates have increased and the uptake of spaces by new leisure concepts has meant the retail landscape has increasingly become a retail-leisure hybrid. Both retail and leisure stakeholders need to consider both sectors for optimal location decision making.

LeisureVision is designed to help stakeholders understand the current leisure landscape to enable smarter location and business decisions.

Our comprehensive RetailVision Points dataset is a competitively priced retail locations dataset with geographical coverage of retailers across the UK.
These are clustered to create RetailVision Destinations , including Retail Centres that are categorised into 14 Types such as shopping centres, retail parks, street etc.
Retail stores are segmented into 5 types: Premium , Mass+ , Mass , Value+ , and Value . This ensures each Retail Centre can be evaluated comparatively to one another on both the quality and quantity of the retail provision.
GMAP’s model simulates the Bricks & Mortar Spend in each store across the 4 product types of:

Our comprehensive RetailVision Points dataset is a competitively priced retail locations dataset with geographical coverage of retailers across the UK.
These are clustered to create RetailVision Destinations , including Retail Centres that are categorised into 14 Types such as shopping centres, retail parks, street etc.
Retail stores are segmented into 5 types: Premium , Mass+ , Mass , Value+ , and Value . This ensures each Retail Centre can be evaluated comparatively to one another on both the quality and quantity of the retail provision.
GMAP’s model simulates the Bricks & Mortar Spend in each store across the 4 product types of:

LeisureVision Points

Our comprehensive RetailVision Points dataset is a competitively priced retail locations dataset with geographical coverage of retailers across the UK.
These are clustered to create RetailVision Destinations , including Retail Centres that are categorised into 14 Types such as shopping centres, retail parks, street etc.
Retail stores are segmented into 5 types: Premium , Mass+ , Mass , Value+ , and Value . This ensures each Retail Centre can be evaluated comparatively to one another on both the quality and quantity of the retail provision.
GMAP’s model simulates the Bricks & Mortar Spend in each store across the 4 product types of:

Our comprehensive RetailVision Points dataset is a competitively priced retail locations dataset with geographical coverage of retailers across the UK.
These are clustered to create RetailVision Destinations , including Retail Centres that are categorised into 14 Types such as shopping centres, retail parks, street etc.
Retail stores are segmented into 5 types: Premium , Mass+ , Mass , Value+ , and Value . This ensures each Retail Centre can be evaluated comparatively to one another on both the quality and quantity of the retail provision.
GMAP’s model simulates the Bricks & Mortar Spend in each store across the 4 product types of:

LeisureVision Destinations

LeisureVision Points

Our comprehensive RetailVision Points dataset is a competitively priced retail locations dataset with geographical coverage of retailers across the UK.
These are clustered to create RetailVision Destinations , including Retail Centres that are categorised into 14 Types such as shopping centres, retail parks, street etc.
Retail stores are segmented into 5 types: Premium , Mass+ , Mass , Value+ , and Value . This ensures each Retail Centre can be evaluated comparatively to one another on both the quality and quantity of the retail provision.
GMAP’s model simulates the Bricks & Mortar Spend in each store across the 4 product types of:

Our comprehensive RetailVision Points dataset is a competitively priced retail locations dataset with geographical coverage of retailers across the UK.
These are clustered to create RetailVision Destinations , including Retail Centres that are categorised into 14 Types such as shopping centres, retail parks, street etc.
Retail stores are segmented into 5 types: Premium , Mass+ , Mass , Value+ , and Value . This ensures each Retail Centre can be evaluated comparatively to one another on both the quality and quantity of the retail provision.
GMAP’s model simulates the Bricks & Mortar Spend in each store across the 4 product types of:

LeisureVision Destinations

What are the Applications of LeisureVision?

LeisureVision insights can be used to help leisure operators, or any stakeholder that requires understandings of the leisure market, to make informed decisions and meet the business requirements of their proposition. Here are some examples of how LeisureVision can be used:

Rank the Opportunity for Leisure activities around the UK.
Objectively support business decisions and site feasibility assessments.
Benchmarking and Affinity or Competitor analysis.
Site performance analysis across your portfolio.
Add additional context to the to the drivers of footfall.

LeisureVision can be delivered as a standalone dataset, as part of a consultative project, or can be further brought to life through our MVPLUS mapping tool.

Who Can Benefit from LeisureVision Insight?

Key decision makers across multiple functions of different types of organisations, including; insight , marketing , property acquisitions , estate management , or location planning teams , could benefit from using LeisureVision.

LeisureVision is applicable to many sectors, including, but not limited to:

Retailers
Food & Beverage Operators
Sport & Fitness Brands
Leisure-Based Retailers
Town Planners
Property Developers
Transport Operators
Marketing Agencies
Consultancies

How Can I Find Out More?

To find out more please visit our LeisureVision webpage , download our LeisureVision product sheet below, or get in touch at info@gmap.com . Alternatively, if you have a requirement for Leisure-based insight outside of the UK , please get in touch as GMAP offer global datasets and solutions!

The UK Fuel Crisis: Investigating the Provision of Fuel Stations

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 11:31:49 GMT

The UK Fuel Crisis: Investigating the Provision of Fuel Stations

29th September 2021

The fuel crisis in the UK has been prominent news over the past week. People have had to endure long queues and in some cases, spending caps on the amount of fuel they can buy.

At GMAP, we have investigated where there is already an existing squeeze in provision, prior to the fuel crisis! Using the DVLA car registrations data and the location of fuel stations, we were able to calculate the number of cars per fuel station for each Postcode Area compared to the national average.

The dark blue areas have higher provision than the national average, e.g. less cars per forecourt. Could the people in these areas be the lucky ones managing to get fuel? The red areas have lower than average provision, e.g. more cars per forecourt. Therefore, are these areas seeing the longest queues?

Figure 1: Total Provision (Cars per Forecourt) for Petrol & Diesel Stations

Figure 2: Provision (Cars per Forecourt) for Diesel Stations

Figure 3: Provision (Cars per Forecourt) for Petrol Stations

The above analysis assumes that people buy petrol where they live. However, this is not always true and therefore we extended our analysis to consider Traffic Counts, as opposed to DVLA registrations. We have used the Department for Transports GB Road Traffic Counts data which is available in our UK MVPLUS system, and themed all the Fuel Stations by the highest annual traffic count within 1km. The followings map shows an example of the Leeds region.

Figure 4: Highest Traffic Count within 1km of Fuel Stations within the Leeds Region

The stations closest to the Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield and Huddersfield centres have the highest traffic counts within 1km, as do stations along major roads, such as the stations at the services along the M62, south west of Cleckheaton. This would suggest these stations will exhibit the longer queues.

Over the next few days and weeks, it will be interesting to see the attempts to mitigate the fuel crisis and how it will be resolved. If you would like to know more about the DVLA dataset or find out about GMAP's analytical expertise, please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

Exploring the Change in Market Share of the Battery Electrical Vehicle Manufacturers

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 11:36:38 GMT

Exploring the Change in Market Share of the Battery Electrical Vehicle Manufacturers

15th September 2021

It has been well reported that sales of Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) have been growing in the last 2 years, with the total number of newly registered BEV’s in the UK more than doubling in H1 2021 compared to H1 2020, with a clear year-on-year increase in BEV vs more traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. But how does this look at an OEM level? GMAP have used our DVLA dataset to explore the BEV market share of OEM’s from H1 2020 compared to H1 2021:

The immediate finding was that for both time periods studied, Tesla has the highest UK BEV market share compared to all other OEM’s with 33% of the market in H1 2020 and 21% in H1 2021 respectively. However, the figures show a significant decrease in UK market share between time periods. Despite this decrease in UK market share, Tesla registered around 145% more vehicles in H1 2021 than the same period in 2020.

‘The total number of newly registered BEV’s in the UK more than doubled in H1 2021 compared to H1 2020’

Tesla have tended to have the premium end of the BEV market to themselves. However, this has more recently been challenged by VWG (Audi e-tron SUV, Porsche Taycan and most recently, the Audi e-tron GT) and Mercedes. The impact of production delays is also a factor here, something that is affecting all producers. Orders for the new Tesla Model S, for example, are delayed until the end of 2022.

At the lower end of the UK BEV market, a number of more affordable BEV models have been released in recent months, increasing market share of other OEM’s in the UK market.

The release of models such as Volkswagens ID.3 and ID.4, which first appear in our data in Q3 2020 and Q1 2021 respectively, in conjunction with their existing BEV offering (e-up and e-golf) have caused significant increases in new registrations between the two time periods studied. In H1 2021, there was over 3 times the number of newly registered BEV’s than H1 2020.

Similarly, the Hyundai Motor Group enjoyed an increase in registrations in this time period. Hyundai and Kia have been key brands in the UK BEV market for some time and Kia’s release of multiple new e-Niro models (e-Niro ‘2’, e-Niro ‘3’ and e-Niro ‘4+’) in Q3 2020 have driven this increase. Sister brand Hyundai announced in 2020 that the Ioniq would become its sub-brand for pure BEV offerings, releasing the award winning Ioniq 5 in Q2 2021.

Stellantis, the Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot Joint Venture, has grown more than threefold; mainly from the Peugeot and Vauxhall brands. This maybe attributed to the release of new commercial BEV’s, such as the Vauxhall Vivaro-e, especially between Q2 2020 and Q1 2021, and the Peugeot E-Expert models between Q3 2020 and Q1 2021.

Interestingly, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, one of the earliest OEM’s to enter the BEV market, witnessed a significant decrease in market share despite selling an increased number of vehicles (a similar picture to Tesla). Again, this is due to more competitors entering the market and perhaps a lack of new product from this group in period. As far as cars are concerned, Renault still only offer the Renault Zoe, Nissan the Leaf.

Over the next few years, as more and more brands enter the BEV market and existing brands expand their ranges, it’s going to be interesting to see how the market changes and which OEM’s emerge as key players in the battle for the UK market. Will Tesla maintain its position at number one or will the more traditional OEMs over-take as the product focus shifts downmarket?

If you would like to know more about the DVLA dataset or find out about GMAP's expertise in the automotive sector, please get in touch at info@gmap.com .

RetailVision Refreshed: Our Enhanced Insight Tool | GMAP

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 11:49:57 GMT

RetailVision Refreshed: Introducing GMAP's Enhanced RetailVision Product & Insight

5th July 2021

GMAP are proud to announce the transformation of our RetailVision product is complete ! RetailVision has been serving UK property portfolio managers for many years. However, the impacts of COVID-19 on retail led us to transform RetailVision to ensure our clients get the insight required as they look to navigate the unprecedented retail landscape created by the pandemic.

Q2 2021 RetailVision’s enhancements include:

The addition of geo-mobility footfall data – a fantastic resource for understanding where customers are travelling from, catchment populations and how their destination preferences are changing over time.
A list of store openings and closures per Retail Destination – understand your competitors’ actions and the estimated impact this has on the retail landscape.
Highly detailed Retail Centre polygons drawn using the buildings physical footprint.
Quarterly updates – be at the coal face of retail developments and gain time-period insights.

RetailVision Insight

“… did the South East turn to booze in the third national lockdown whilst the North West indulged in pastries and pies?”

Naturally, we have been very eager to delve into RetailVision! As a starting point, it is interesting to see how the different regions have coped with lockdown. If we look at the biggest % revenue changes by category and compare to the previous period, did the South East turn to booze in the third national lockdown whilst the North West indulged in pastries and pies?

Category Revenue Change in the South East vs. North West

From a national perspective, the update measured a net loss of -1,184 store s . New openings are predominantly restricted to Supermarkets and C-stores , but DIY brands such as Tool Station and Screwfix are under-going rapid store portfolio expansion, along with value stores such as B&M. Unsurprisingly, store closures have been dominated by fashion brands, driven by the breakup of the Arcadia Group and Debenhams.

Predominantly Shopping Districts and Shopping Centres have been most impacted by store closures ; of 1,967 closures that took place, 772 were in Shopping Districts and 590 in Shopping Centres. The “Oxford and Regent Street” Shopping District had 15 store closures, the highest in the country, reducing retail floorspace by over 500,000 sq. ft, with the demise of the Debenhams flagship accounting for over a third of the Centre’s decline. The “Oxford and Regent Street” Revenue declined by 24.3%, this was largely due to store closures, however the temporary closure of non-essential stores and the decline in footfall during the lockdown also played a major part in this.

National Closures by Centre Type

Looking further north to GMAP’s doorstep, the "Leeds Trade Zone" (which includes Leeds Shopping District, Leeds Trinity Shopping Centre, Victoria Quarter Shopping Centre, and the Train Station) has seen a -5.6% reduction in Total Revenue. Further inspection shows Grocery has increased 13%, whilst Fashion and Comparison has contracted -15%. In terms of stores opening, we have a new Decathlon (which one of our team members was perhaps a little too excited about!). Of course, like the rest of the UK, Leeds has seen numerous store closures, 14 in total, resulting in a loss of -£35m and -94k sq. ft. of retail floorspace. These details can all be explored in the new RetailVision Reporting Dashboard :

We have only touched the surface of the intelligence RetailVision provides. Looking forward, we will continue to bring you instalments of RetailVision Insights as well as other perspectives RetailVision can offer, such as comparing the catchments of Retail Destinations, both over time and across different Centre Types using geo-mobility footfall data.

Let us know if you have any burning questions you would like us to investigate, or if the pie versus alcohol consumption rings true for you! Find out more about RetailVision or get in touch at info@gmap.com to request a sample of the dataset or organise a demo of the RetailVision Dashboard Reporting Tool.

Why GMAP are Excited About the 2021 Census

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 18:19:10 GMT

Why GMAP are Excited About the 2021 Census

18th March 2021

'The census is a survey that happens every 10 years and gives us a picture of all the people and households'

www.census.gov.uk

Since 1801, there has been a full Census for each jurisdiction of the UK every 10 years, except for during WW2 in 1941 and Ireland in 1921. The last Census took place in 2011. The 2021 Census Day will take place for England, Wales and Northern Ireland this Sunday 21st March 2021. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Scotland have delayed their Census until next year and will take place in March 2022.

The Outputs of the Census

Outputs from the Census are published at different geographical levels by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) who are responsible for the planning and running of the Census. We should expect the final release for all census data outputs for England and Wales in March 2023.

The Government primarily uses the Census for policy and planning purposes. For example, it is used to develop policies, allocate money to local authorities, and contributes to localised governance regarding public services including transport, education, and healthcare. This year the Census will be particularly insightful in understanding the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic ‘to make sure that the services you use meet the needs of our changing society. This could include hospitals, schools, universities, and job centres’ (census.gov.uk).

The outputs of the Census are also used by other stakeholders, such as charities, community groups, students, researchers, and academics to name a few. In addition, Census statistics also help businesses, like us at GMAP , to understand customers, inform business decision making and minimise risk. There is limited cost to end users, but the business benefits can be significant. For example, we use Census data to help our clients in their marketing decisions such as determining the best places to invest in advertising or where people should be surveyed. We also use Census data as a factor in our retail location planning consultancy projects to depict where our clients should locate their outlets to best serve their target consumers. In addition, solutions derived from Census data can be used to tailor the products and services offered in individual stores.

The Census in a Covid World

For the first time, the 2021 Census is a digital-first census, whereby people are encouraged to respond online. Although online was an option in 2011, Covid-19 has driven the Census to being ‘online-first’. Census field officers will still be visiting the households of those who do not complete Census, whilst socially distanced and with PPE. The field officers have previous played a vital role in contributing to the Census data quality measures that resulted in the high 94% response rate in 2011.

The Census provides a cross-sectional view of the population at a single point-in-time. Therefore, this Sunday’s Census on 21st March 2021 will provide data on the population during Covid-19, and even a national lockdown. Questions such as those around travel to work are based on current circumstances, and consequently will capture how Covid-19 has impacted people’s lives.

Like many companies, all of us at GMAP are working from home at the moment, whereas that would not normally be the case! It will be useful to understand the number of people that were working from home at this point-in-time when looking backwards at assessing the impact of Covid-19. However, assuming we all return to our offices at least some of the time, the work from home data capture from this current lockdown will be irrelevant in future planning in 5 years’ time. Therefore, what will we use to measure travel to work in the interim between the new normal and the next Census?

Why are we so interested in the Census at GMAP?

At GMAP, we are regular end users of the Census data. It is one of the factors used in our project consultancy work, to provide location intelligence and as part of our location planning model. We also provide our clients access to the Census data in our MVPLUS mapping tool , which allows users to manipulate, extract and query census variables at different geographical levels and in conjunction with their own data. In addition, the Census also contributes to some of our off-the-shelf data products .

Although 2023 might seem a long way off to wait until the final Census 2021 outputs will be released, we recognise the importance of this data and the importance it will have in contributing to helping our clients make informed business decisions, and understanding how their customers were impacted by Covid-19. As a group of geographers, the Census has been a hot topic of conversation amongst the GMAP team and we hope you are as excited to fill in your 2021 Census as we are!

Sources:

https://census.gov.uk/

https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census

MVPLUS Location Intelligence Software: Catchment Tool | GMAP

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 17:53:46 GMT

Client's Most Valuable Feature of Our MVPLUS Location Intelligence Software

3rd March 2021

MVPLUS is GMAP's location intelligence software which enables clients to carry out market analysis, site assessments and target customers. This self-serve Geographical Information System (GIS) is designed to allow users to undertake in-house analysis to enhance understanding of the spatial relationships between their network and their customers. GMAP provide MVPLUS training, continual helpdesk and technical support, and regular MVPLUS Account Meetings as part of an MVPLUS licence.

According to our survey, sent out prior to our most recent MVPLUS Account Meetings, our Catchment Tool is our client’s most valuable feature. This is no surprise really, as in just a few steps, MVPLUS allows clients to create discrete territories or full overlapping batch catchments of hundreds of sites using their own criteria .

Our clients value our Catchment Tool ’s ability to create detailed customised market reports of their current and future portfolio, by aggregating socio-demographic data, detailed RetailVision market statistics, competitor locations, an array of census variables and their own imported data whether that be data such as market potential data or customer locations, using drive time , distance , radius or nearest rules .

The tool’s capability doesn’t just stop there, other client uses include building sales territories , organising the distribution of people to points for logistical business planning and exploring cannibalisation within their current and future portfolios.

Visit our MVPLUS page, download the MVPLUS Product Sheet , or contact Alice Thomson at alice.thomson@gmap.com to find out how MVPLUS and our dedicated client support team can help your organisation.

Arcadia Brands Acquisition: UK Retail Impact Analysis | GMAP

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 16:57:45 GMT

Impacts of the Asos & Boohoo Acquisitions of the Arcadia Group Brands

10th February 2021

Earlier this week on Monday 8th February, it was announced that online fashion retailer Boohoo is purchasing the Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis brands and their online business operations in a £25.2m deal. This comes one week after Asos, another online fashion retailer, announced it would be purchasing the Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT brands in a £265m deal for the brands, with an extra £30m for their stock.

Just over two months since entering administration, all the Arcadia Group’s brands have now been sold off to online retailers or closed. The Arcadia brands that were once the face of the UK high street, no longer have a physical monopoly. What does this mean for the UK retail landscape? At GMAP we have been looking at our RetailVision product to assess the impact the loss of the physical Arcadia brands will have on the UK retail landscape.

At GMAP using RetailVision Points , our comprehensive store locations database, we have assessed the impact of the store closures of the brands brought by Asos and Boohoo, including Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge, Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis, will have on retail Destinations. To truly derive the impact of the Arcadia Group’s devolution, we have analysed the locations that existed in November 2020, prior to when Arcadia went into administration.

We used our MVPLUS mapping tool to create the following map, which depicts the Postcode Areas with the highest count of store closures that will be occurring from the Asos and Boohoo purchases. This map highlights that the areas in and around Northern Ireland, Newcastle upon Tyne, Leeds, Essex, Reading, and those in the corridor across the Midlands to the East coast will have the highest number of store closures by Postcode Area.

To further assess the impact these closures will have on retail landscape we conducted analysis using RetailVision Destinations . RetailVision Destinations is a detailed illustration of the UK’s retail landscape with approximately 21,000 Retail Centres, combined into 13,000 Trade Zones and further grouped into 800 Super Trade Zones. The closure of the stores for these brands will affect:

The following table in Figure 3 shows the Retail Centres that will be most affected with the highest number of closures:

Analysis of the Retail Centre types, in Figure 4 below, derived that of all the centres that will be affected by the store closures, 51% were in Shopping Districts, 45% in Shopping Centres, and 4% in Retail Parks:

To see the regional depiction of the impact of these closures, some of the Postcode Areas in Figure 1 with the highest closure counts were further analysed at Trade Zone level, aggregated Retail Centres, using MVPLUS . The following maps in Figure 5 depicts the Trade Zones with some of the highest count of store closures that will be occurring from the Asos and Boohoo purchases. These maps show that some of the Trade Zones with the highest numbers of closures will be in city centres, including Leeds and Belfast. However, the centres in regional cities and towns will also be greatly impacted by the closures, such as Wakefield, Huddersfield, Maidenhead, High Wycombe, Bracknell, and Barnsley.

In the current lockdown, shoppers are unlikely to feel the impact these vacancies will have on Retail Destinations. When we return to our High Street and Retail Centres, they will not be what we used to know and there will be rifts where the Arcadia brand stores used to be. Consumers will be able to access these brands online, run by Asos and Boohoo. However, will it be the same? What and who is likely to enter the spaces these brands used to dominate?

Find out more about GMAP’s services including our RetailVision Points store locations database, RetailVision Destinations and MVPLUS software or get in touch to let us know what you think the future of UK retail will look like!

GMAP's 12 Maps of Christmas: A Festive Collection | GMAP

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 16:10:09 GMT

GMAP's 12 Maps of Christmas

23rd December 2020

This year, in the 12 working days running up to Christmas, the GMAP team each be contributed their all-time favourite maps for ‘GMAP’s 12 Maps of Christmas’. As it is Christmas Eve, here is a summary of the 12 Maps and why they were chosen by each team member!

Our 1st Map of Christmas was the iconic London Underground map from one of our directors, John Chesworth.

John said: ‘The London Underground was first mapped in 1908. In 1931, it was redesigned by Harry Beck to create the Tube map we know today for just £10, or £600 in current money. Although it doesn’t show London’s real geography, it is a great example of less is more; sacrificing the precision of geographical detail and adopting a clear visual language helps the map to communicate the key message much more effectively’

We are seeing the media report more and more on the perils of a ‘Cashless Society’ as vendors and consumers favour digital payments over cash. And who could blame our preference? We constantly strive for ease; and online shopping, contactless payments, and mobile applications give us the immediacy we demand. Consequently, ‘cash only’ accounts for 28% of all payments today; ten years ago, it was 60%. Continuing at this rate means the UK will be cashless by 2026. This forecast, coupled with retail banks having to foot an annual £5 billion bill for ATM infrastructure costs, is challenging the economic model. Therefore, like rising costs have given us smaller chocolate bars, the number of bank branches and ATM’s is reducing.

"'Cash Only' accounts for 28% of all payments today"

Despite our preference for digital payments, 97% of us carry cash. In fact, the average amount is £41! This culminated in 2.4 billion ATM cash withdrawals in 2018, totalling £193 billion. It is no wonder then that a recent UK public opinion poll concluded only 36% of UK adults believed they could cope with going completely cashless. Government advisors are concerned too. They state eight million UK adults (17% of the UK population) would get left behind – just think about the number of cash-in-hand employments: window cleaners, gardeners, labourers, to name a few. Additionally, consumer association Which? fears that deprived neighbourhoods have the least access to cash, even though they are more dependent on it than their affluent counterparts. Thus, it seems the concerns about the so-called ‘Cash Deserts’ are justified, at least for the next 15 years anyway.

In response, LINK – the network that connects the UK’s cash machines and enables universal access to people’s cash – has set up a £1 million fund to pay for 40 to 50 ATM’s requested by residents in the ‘Cash Deserts’. To qualify as a ‘Cash Desert’, areas must not have access to a free to use ATM or Post Office within 1km and the machine must be in a secure locale.

Here at GMAP, we have deployed our MVPLUS interactive mapping system to investigate how feasible cash access is at postcode level, nationally. To do this we ran a proximity analysis to assess the distance between each postcode and the nearest ATM or Post Office, and appended the 2019 CAMEO geodemographic dataset to the results. We then compared the 1.4 million households around our locale within the postcode areas of: Bradford (BD), Huddersfield (HD), Harrogate (HG), Halifax (HX), Leeds (LS), Wakefield (WF) and York (YO) to the national picture.

"85% of UK households have an ATM or Post Office within 1km"

Using LINK’s definition, our data shows that 85% of UK households have an ATM or Post Office within 1km. Not surprisingly, the highest accessibility is within London whilst the most Northern areas of Scotland have the least – 44% in the Northern Hebrides. For our locale, the coverage is below the national average at 73%. This means approximately 360,000 households are classified as ‘Cash Deserts’. For households not in a ‘Cash Desert’, the average travel distance is ½ km across all postcode areas, except for York which is nearer 400 metres. If we look at the individual postcode areas, there is a fair amount of variation; households with a Leeds postcode have the most accessibility to cash at 79%, whilst those in Huddersfield only have 62% - the lowest cash accessibility within England! Interestingly, had LINK set the qualification threshold at 2km, only 6% of households nationally would be in a ‘Cash Desert’ and 8% within our region.

Utilising the CAMEO UK dataset within MVPLUS allows us to quickly test whether Which?’s hypothesis - that deprived communities have less access to cash - is true in our locale. CAMEO UK segments postcodes into 68 distinct categories and 10 aggregated groups. These categories are assigned likely attributes, from age and household income, to online shopping habits and even newspaper preferences! The top 1 to 3 groups are the most well off, whilst the bottom 8 to 10 are the least, with an average household income below £20k.

Compared to the UK, our locale has a higher proportion of groups 6 to 10. Contrary to Which’s statement, our research has found that both nationally and within our region the most deprived CAMEO groups have the best cashpoint and Post Office accessibility. It is those in groups 2 and 3 – ‘Prosperous Professionals’ and ‘Flourishing Society’ – that have the least accessibility. Both these segments are typically: aged 45 and over, live in affluent commuter towns and villages with low population density, are 68% more likely than the UK average to shop online more than once a week, and read the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph!

Although the UK has one of the largest free to use ATM networks in the world, retail banking needs to address the challenge of dispeling public fears over loss of customer service, whilst also making free to use ATMs profitable enough to remain active. As bank branches contiune to shut, banks should see ATMs as an alternative point of contact with their customers. To this end, perhaps the role of the ATM should be re-invented to take on more of the traditional branch based roles, such as 24-hour cash and cheque deposits. Simultaneously, banks should look to spatially re-organise their ATM networks for optimisation. This could prevent further financial exclusion in areas such as Huddersfield, and perhaps reduce the surplus of machines in London.

Studies so far have been undertaken using the geography of Postcode Districts and tend to exclude the location of Post Offices. Postcode Districts are an aggregation of Postcodes, therefore, they have a tendency to mask the intricacies at play. To enable full optimisation and prevent exclusions it is crucial that future studies adopt our methodology and use postcodes as the base geography.

As we have demonstrated in this exploration, GMAP’s MVPLUS system can help you to conduct internal spatial analysis using your own data, CAMEO’s geodemographic segmentation or other data sources. Further insight can be added to your MVPLUS analysis using GMAP’s RetailVision product or DVLA’s anonymised data set . Furthermore, GMAP’s consultancy services, including Ideal Network Plans, Sales Reporting and Bespoke Analysis, can assist you in addressing your industry challenges by providing actionable geographical insights and solutions. Get in touch for more information at info@gmap.com or give us a call at 0113 306 1585

Our 2nd Map of Christmas was the map of Saint Michael's Line chosen by one of our Senior Consultants, Oliver Cook.

Oli said: ‘Saint Michael’s Line is a straight line linking various religious sites dedicated to Saint Michael with Jerusalem. This includes Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall, Le Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy and Sacra di San Michele near Turin. Quite an intriguing coincidence, but utter nonsense’

The 3rd Map of Christmas, chosen by Coralie Mace, Consultant, was a map of Kanto from Pokémon!

Coralie said: ‘This is the map from the first generation of Pokémon games and also the first map I cared about as a child! It’s modelled and named after the Kanto region of Japan'

The 4th Map of Christmas’ depicts the advance into and retreat from Russia by Napoleon, selected by Matt Cawcutt, Director.

Matt said: ‘This is my favourite map - it combines six different sets of data: geography (rivers, cities, battles etc.), the army’s path in and out, the army’s direction, the soldiers remaining, temperature and time in relation to the temperature’

For the 5th Map of Christmas Louis Judge, Consultant, chose a map of Anfield, the home to Liverpool Football Club.

Louis said: ‘I’ve chosen this map because a matchday at Anfield is quite possibly my favourite place to be! This year has meant there has not been chance for many fans to be there, until very recently. I look forward to the day when I can go back’

Alice Thomson chose the 6th Map of Christmas with a map from her favourite coffee table book!

Alice said: ‘This is a map from my favourite coffee table book ‘Explorers Atlas – for the Incurably Curious’ by Michal Gaszynski, and Piotr Wilkowiecki, which combines really beautifully annotated maps with some great random facts!’

For our 7th Map of Christmas Joseph Murphy, Senior Consultant, has chosen a map of Dubai, where he grew up!

Joe said: ‘It is a place like no other and reminds me of my happy childhood growing up there'

For the 8th Map of Christmas Robert Chew, Consultant, chose a map of the very interesting border between Belgium and the Netherlands!

Rob said: ‘I discovered my map during a project thinking I’d done something very wrong! The map is by no means pretty, but it makes for good, but useless pub knowledge. It depicts the utterly chaotic border between Belgium and the Netherlands in the towns of Baarle-Nassau (NL) and Baarle-Hertog (BE). The border muddles through the streets paying no attention whatsoever to the built environment which results in many properties straddling nations. Historically, residents would regularly re-locate their front doors for economic advantage and move to the opposite end of the bar for extended drinking hours. Today, both countries policies are more aligned, but I like the thought of being able to sit on the same sofa as someone, in different countries'

Neil Carr, one of our Technical Consultants, chose the 9th Map of Christmas with a rare map of the village of Idle in West Yorkshire where he grew up!

Neil said: ‘When I was younger I enjoyed researching local history and the oldest map I could find of where I lived was based on a document the local library/council said I could have. The document was a draft version of someone’s research into the history of the village, I think the document itself is quite rare as I don’t think it ever got published. The map though did appear in Robert C. Allen's (1927) book History of Bolton in Bradford-dale and I assume this is where researcher sourced it from'

Alice Goddard, Consultant, chose the 10th Map of Christmas’ with a map of the famous Leeds pub crawl, The Otley Run!

Alice said: 'The Otley Run is a famous pub crawl in Leeds. Like many of the GMAP team, I did my first Otley Run whilst studying Geography at the Leeds University, where it is very much a rite of passage. It is a 1.5mile route that starts in far Headingley and ends toward the City Centre, with 16 pubs (and GMAP’s office) in between. I am certain when we next all return to the office post-Covid we will be taking a trip to The Fenton, a pub many Otley Runners don’t quite make it too!'

Our penultimate 11th Map of Christmas has been chosen by Limei Zheng, or more specifically Limei's daughter Meili, with a map of where different animals come from.

Limei said: 'This is Meili’s favourite map (at least one of her favourite maps at the moment). I bought her a book called ‘Animal Atlas’, which is a book about animals which live in different countries. She likes to look at this book and points at the maps where the animals are, and saying she would like to go there to see these animals'

Our final 12th Map of Christmas couldn't not have a Christmas element with it being Christmas Eve. It has been chosen by one of our Technical Consultants Jonathan Moore (also known as Max in GMAP) whose son watches The Grinch every night!

Max says: ‘ For my map I have chosen The Fantasy World Map, which contains many Fantasy lands including Whoville from Dr Seuss’ The Grinch. I was torn between choosing the Santa Tracker map or this map which contains Whoville, as both are popular with my son. This year, The Grinch has definitely won as it is being watched every night in our household...'

We would like you wish you a very Merry Christmas from the GMAP team. To all our friends and clients, thank you for your support throughout 2020 and we look forward to seeing what 2021 has in store! Please get in touch to find out more about how much we love maps, or to let us know your favourite map.

Images from:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/travel/downloads/tube_map.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Michael%27s_line, https://kdstitching.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/pokemon-yellow-kanto-map-pattern/, https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard, https://www.liverpoolfc.com/return-of-supporters-to-anfield/getting-to-anfield, ‘Explorers Atlas – for the Incurably Curious’ by Michal Gaszynski and Piotr Wilkowiecki, Google Maps, Lonely Planet Kids Animal Atlas, https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/835628905834977321/

Geodemographic Profiling of England's Covid-19 Tiers

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 10:03:19 GMT

Geodemographic Profiling of England's COVID-19 Tiers

1st December 2020

There has been a lot of speculation regarding the disparities in economic performance widening as a result of COVID restrictions in England. So at GMAP, we thought we would use our MVPLUS location intelligence tool and the CAMEO geodemographic classification to profile the COVID Tiers that will be coming into force when the current lockdown ends tomorrow.

Our exploration showed a strong correlation between affluence and the COVID Tiers in place from tomorrow. This is apparent in the indices above. Currently Tier 3 has a much greater % of households of the lower affluence CAMEO groups than England as a whole, and Tier 2 has a much greater % of the higher affluence CAMEO groups.

What could be causing this? Is it the ability of more affluent groups to work from home in less labour-intensive jobs, their reduced need to use public transport or their likelihood to reside in more rural areas with a lower risk of contact?

With continued uncertainty ahead as we emerge from the Lockdown, the question remains as to what impact this will have on the post-COVID recovery, and on Boris Johnson’s “levelling-up” agenda?

Find out more about geodemographic consumer profiling with CAMEO and our MVPLUS tool , and get in touch .

With continued uncertainty ahead as we emerge from the Lockdown, the question remains as to what impact this will have on the post-COVID recovery, and on Boris Johnson’s “levelling-up” agenda?

Find out more about geodemographic consumer profiling with CAMEO and our MVPLUS tool , and get in touch .

Supporting Our Clients Navigate the Impacts of Covid-19

Sat, 28 Nov 2020 10:48:15 GMT

Supporting Our Clients Navigate the Impacts of Covid-19

28th November 2020

"'Cash Only' accounts for 28% of all payments today"

"85% of UK households have an ATM or Post Office within 1km"

Over the last 8 months working with our clients we have recognised how the changing patterns of COVID-19 and the government response plans, have had direct impacts on business decisions. We have therefore made the commitment to make weekly COVID cases data and the Tier data for England available to our MVPLUS users, while this data is so important.

Here are some examples of how these datasets can be mapped and used for in-house client analysis:

We have mapped out England's Tier data for each Local Authority District, which will come into force following the end of Lockdown on the 2nd of December and also created maps of the COVID cases data, aggregated monthly, to visualise and compare the temporal change in COVID cases in England through September, October and November (please note that November’s data is only for a partial month).

Get in touch to find out more about these datasets, our MVPLUS tool and how they can help your business navigate the changing landscape.

The 2030 UK New Fuel Vehicle Ban & Electric Vehicle (EV) Adoption

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 17:40:47 GMT

The 2030 UK New Fuel Vehicle Ban & Electric Vehicle (EV) Adoption

19th November 2020

"'Cash Only' accounts for 28% of all payments today"

"85% of UK households have an ATM or Post Office within 1km"

The UK Government recently announced the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles is being brought forward from 2035 to 2030 to accelerate the switch from fuel vehicles to new alternative fuel and electric vehicle (EV) models. While the ban doesn’t affect existing registered petrol/diesel vehicles, it does bring a sense of urgency to develop battery technology and charging infrastructure.

EV adoption is on the rise in the UK; GMAP’s analysis of the DVLA's anonymised data set demonstrates new EV registrations up to Q3 of 2020 have already surpassed the total for 2019. This level of increase, in a year marked by COVID-19 disruption, can only be good news for this growing sector.

However, several common challenges facing wider adoption of EV’s remain; purchase cost, battery driving range, charging point speed and charging point access. The Government has pledged funding to combat these issues affecting EV adoption and it’s clear, there is a vast amount of work to be done in the next 10 years to prepare for the transition. The question is, will we be ready?

GMAP are resellers of the DVLA anonymised data set , find out more and get in touch .

Retail Case Study - Geek Retreat's Resilience to Covid-19 Impacts

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 10:12:49 GMT

Retail Case Study - Geek Retreat's Resilience to Covid-19 Impacts

22nd October 2020

Earlier this week comic and gaming retailer Geek Retreat, which specialises in “all things geeky”, announced they will open another 200 franchises over the next two years creating around 600 new jobs. Geek Retreat has remained resilient during the pandemic due to its specialism in various cult brands and its loyal customer base!

At GMAP we used our MVPLUS mapping tool and R etailVision Points , our store locations database, and RetailVision Destinations , including Retail Centres, to evaluate Geek Retreat’s current store network and identify potential centres for new sites.

Our analysis found typically their stores are in a ‘Shopping District’ or ‘Street’ Centres, with either a Value, Mass or Mass+ centre PMV price status. This profile, combined with MVPLUS catchment tool analysis, was used to identify key affinity brands.

Using our Store Locations dataset for these brands, the top 10 recommended Centres for the new franchises were established based on Centre presence. York Shopping District topped our list with the highest affinity count and a profile typical to a Geek Retreat store!

Find out more about our MVPLUS software and RetailVision products , and get in touch for objective data-driven location planning solutions.

Cash Access: UK Cash Deserts & Accessibility Analysis | GMAP

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 11:01:28 GMT

Cash Access Oasis or Desert?

14th November 2019

"'Cash Only' accounts for 28% of all payments today"

"85% of UK households have an ATM or Post Office within 1km"

" 'Cash Only' accounts for 28% of all payments today"

"85% of UK households have an ATM or Post Office within 1km"

GMAP: 30 Years of Location Planning & Retail Evolution | GMAP

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 15:03:52 GMT

GMAP Reflect on 30 Years of Change

25th October 2019

Over 30 years ago, GMAP's groundbreaking location planning strategies created a industry that has become an embedded concept in business decision making. Following a management buyout, GMAP is trading independently again as GMAP Analytics and has gone full circle by moving back onto the University of Leeds campus! To celebrate this, and our website going live, we have written an overview of how GMAP, location planning methods and the retail environment have changed in the last three decades. Enjoy and let us know what you think!

GMAP

Then

GMAP, (Geographical Modelling and Planning), was founded as a location planning consultancy in 1988 at the University of Leeds, by the School of Geography and the Innovation Service. The ground-breaking Spatial Interaction Models that were developed by the academic founders Clarke and Wilson provided retailers with insight, far beyond the capabilities of the more commonplace Geographical Information Systems (GIS) approaches. As such, GMAP was instrumental in establishing the consultancy and in-house location planning industry that exists today.

Now

Fast forward 31 years, GMAP continues to help businesses in the retail, automotive and forecourt sectors to grow, rationalise and optimise their networks in over 60 countries. Over the years, the GMAP team has been a subsidiary of numerous companies. Following a management buyout from TransUnion (previously Callcredit) by Matt Cawcutt and John Chesworth, GMAP started trading independently again as GMAP Analytics. In May this year GMAP returned to its roots on the University of Leeds campus in the Nexus Innovation Hub.

The GMAP Logo - Then & Now

GMAP's Home at University of Leeds - Then & Now

Matt Cawcutt - Then & Now

John Chesworth - Then & Now

Location Planning

Location planning is an embedded principle in retail decision-making. Retailers recognise the importance of ‘location, location, location’ for enabling their brands to grow successfully and sustainably whilst preventing harmful investment decisions. Developing the optimal retail network can help a brand access the right consumers and provide more brand awareness than any other marketing campaign due to the ‘halo effect’ whereby online sales increase within the vicinity of a store. The original location planning concept was about generating spatial understanding using GIS, but it has and continues to be enhanced by the development of increasingly sophisticated modelling techniques.

The Changing Location Planning Methods

Just as GMAP has transformed, the location planning methods themselves have altered with advances in computing technology, more powerful analytical tools and the exponential increase in data availability from the likes of ‘Big Data’, Open Source and mobile data (‘mData’). Paper-based data approaches seem unfathomable given what can be facilitated with today’s technology.

In the 1980s, GIS mapping tools were only available on expensive computing systems. However, GIS applications are no longer as expensive or difficult to use, meaning they are not solely used by GIS experts. The simplification of GIS software packages, such as GMAP’s MVPLUS tool, means that geographical analysis can be conducted in-house across multiple departments, such as location planning, property acquisitions, or even marketing teams.

In the early days, GMAP employed interns to create digital map layers from paper copies. Thankfully today this is in the past as mapping software has revolutionised the industry. On-going technological advances, such as automation and machine learning, allow us to provide our clients with ever more efficient, varied and insightful consultation. As no two projects are the same, our Spatial Interaction Models are built with the capacity to include bespoke elements, such as different retail formats, future developments, customer datasets and additional datasets, including the CAMEO geodemographic consumer segmentation . We also offer RetailVision , which is our off-the-shelf product that is built from our comprehensive Store Locations dataset and retail modelling techniques. RetailVision provides an extensive depiction of the UK retail market, with retail centre revenue estimations that can be used to rank and evaluate retail destinations. With the substantial changes within the industry, GMAP’s location planning methods have been adapted and will continue to develop to ensure our clients remain resilient to the increasing pressures in today’s retail environment.

GMAP's Computing - Then & Now

The Changing Retail Environment

As GMAP and location planning methods have changed over the past 30 years, so has the global retail environment. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the shift away from traditional high street retailing to ‘Out of Town’ retail parks and centres. The noughties signified rapid technological developments and with it, the internet and online shopping.

The prevalence of the internet in our homes and pockets has instigated our consumer demand for convenience. As a result, retailers have had to evolve. This has happened in a few ways; supermarkets have gone full circle and re-created smaller format, local stores on the high street and on petrol forecourts, whilst non-grocery retailers have evolved from being purely ‘Bricks and Mortar’ to focussing revenues in developing their online presence. This latter adaptation has resulted in a media frenzy reporting the ‘Death of the High Street’. However, one major feature that online shopping can’t replace is the physical experience, which remains a consumer priority. In fact, 80% of sales transactions still happen in store; therefore, many retailers have adopted ‘omni-channel’ business models. It is recognised that online sales increase within the vicinity of a store, known as the ‘halo effect’. Therefore, the right locations can provide more brand awareness than any other marketing campaign.

Changes have been witnessed across all aspects of retail. Car dealers are exploring alternative retail formats in key shopping destinations, such as the interactive showroom-style FordStore within Next in Manchester’s Arndale Centre. Similarly, ‘big box’ homeware stores are moving into retail centres, for example Ikea are locating smaller stores in city centres. Forecourt retailers are also having to focus on providing convenience through adding store offerings, whilst their business models are more frequently shifting to wholesale operations and mergers.

A Key Retail Trend - Then & Now

Businesses are under increased pressure to get a good return of investment, navigate consumer behaviours and build a retail network that can lead to the long-term success of their brand. Nobody wants to be the next victim to the retail apocalypse, meaning Location planning has become more important than ever!

No matter your sector, GMAP Analytics can help you navigate the changing retail landscape and the optimal way to locate your network. Visit www.gmap.com to learn more about us and get in touch at info@gmap.com or call us on +44 (0) 113 306 1585 for more information on how we can help you make informed geographical decisions.

The GMAP team look forward to hearing from you!

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Retail Whitepaper - Let's Get Digital But Stay Physical

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 11:55:42 GMT

Let's Get Digital But Stay Physical

3rd October 2019

Retail Whitepaper Let's Get Digital But Stay Physical

The retail landscape has changed, and retailers need to change accordingly. Retailers need to adopt the digital and revise the physical to survive the ‘Retail Apocalypse’.

We have provided some background to the changing retail environments, summarised some examples of current retail success stories, the ways in which staying or going physical can benefit your brand, and the current trends in the retail industry which could help you remain resilient to the changing retail landscape.

GMAP Reflect on 30 Years of Change

Why Don't Dealership Locations Work The Way They Used To?

Why Don't Dealership Locations Work The Way They Used To?

Key Insights

Most dealership networks weren’t planned in one go…

What's changing in the automotive sector?

Some of the key changes shaping dealer networks include:

Current market trends in the automotive industry are testing dealership networks

Public registration trends

Customer travel behaviour

Different patterns for purchase and service

Overlapping dealership catchments

Dealership location strategy is moving on from visibility to viability

How do you manage dealership locations across multiple brands?

What these automotive market trends mean for dealership networks going forward

Stop guessing and start measuring

Retail Location Strategy And How to Build One

Why Retail Location Strategy Matters and How You Can Develop One

Key Insights

For years, retail growth in the UK followed a fairly predictable pattern…

What is retail location data strategy (and why does it even matter?)

Famous and proven examples of retail location strategy

Scale, replication and franchising

What are the main factors affecting site selection?

Footfall volume vs footfall quality

High-profile locations vs lower-cost alternatives

Day-to-day operations and logistics

Could your nearby competitors actually be a good opportunity?

Rethinking retail locations for today’s market

How to develop a retail location strategy that works

The questions retail leaders must answer haven’t changed…

Replacing instinct with insight

Testing decisions before committing capital

Turning location into competitive advantage

Automotive Market Trends Affecting Dealer Networks | GMAP

Will Automotive Market Trends In 2026 Affect Dealership Networks & Dealership Locations?

Key Insights

Over the past 10 years, there have been, let’s say, a few changes to the automotive industry…

The key automotive trends affecting dealer networks in 2026

Factoring location planning into strategy

What really matters when consolidating dealership locations…

Why data-led location planning is critical

Using GMAP Analytics for locating your next dealership

What 2026 Means For Retail Location Planning | GMAP

What 2026 Means For Retail Location Planning

Key Insights

Factors Affect Retail Store Location

Data-Driven Location Decisions

Optimising Store Portfolios

Artificial Intelligence and Agentic Commerce

How does agentic commerce work?

Connecting Digital and Physical Environments

How advertising and the planning cycle play into location data

So, how do you turn data into better location choices? ﻿

Unlocking the Leisure Halo Effect: A New Era in Retail Success

Unlocking the Leisure Halo Effect: A New Era in Retail Success

The Retail-Leisure Halo Effect

The Power of Footfall Synergy

Trinity Leeds vs Crown Point: A Tale of Two Shopper Missions

Conclusion: Planning for the Experiential Future of Retail

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Why GMAP is a Great Place to Kickstart Your Career: Insights from Recent Graduates

Why GMAP is a Great Place to Kickstart Your Career: Insights from Recent Graduates

Our new Graduates have now been part of the GMAP Team for over 6 Months

Meet Charlotte and Awais: Recent Graduates Who Are Thriving at GMAP

Awais Hafesji – Graduate Consultant

Charlotte Taylor – Graduate Consultant

Comprehensive Training in a Supportive Learning Environment

Diverse Industry Exposure: Real-World Experience Across Multiple Sectors

Early Responsibility & Impact

Close-Knit, Collaborative Team Culture

Flexibility & Career Growth: Tailor Your Path to Your Strengths

Encouragement to Innovate & Fast Skill Development

Work-Life Balance: Prioritising Well-Being

Looking Toward the Future

Apply Now

Hexagonal Geography for Geo-Mobility Data

Chasing Gold: Exploring the UK's Premier Olympic Sport Facilities

Chasing Gold: Exploring the UK's Premier Olympic Sport Facilities

Distribution of our Single and Multi-Sport Facilities

So, how do you turn data into better location choices?

The Census at GMAP