Location-Based Marketing

4Store Location and Georetailing

Why talk about georetailing? In fact, the first (and still among the most frequent) applications of geomarketing concern retail activities. Geomarketing within the meaning of geodemographics is of great interest for retail activities (Johnson 1997; Gonzàlez-Benito et al. 2007). Chapter 3 presented the knowledge concerning new products, merchandising, pricing and promotion in the broad sense: all these elements are also part of the retailing mix, even if it requires an adaptation of the marketing mix to the specificities of retail.

Merchandising, pricing and communication issues are far from being the same between manufacturers and retailers. Place (from the 4Ps) in the marketing mix concerns mainly linked to the retailing mix-store location issues (Cliquet 1992). A distinction is made between development or growth, in general, and expansion, which corresponds to territory development.

Chapter 4 focuses on these issues of store location, which are always at the heart of the expansion strategies of retailers and many service companies such as banks. A good location is defined as a site where sales can be transformed into profits (Pyle 1926). But the context is changing very rapidly: Internet sales and consumers’ desire for omnichannel, new players called “pure players”, the return of proximity and the need to reduce the size of hypermarkets and certain networks of points of sale. The problems of location are at least as much the result of desires ...