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Trade Area Analysis
Trade Area Analysis

How to visualize the trade area of a place

Matt Taaffe avatar
Written by Matt Taaffe
Updated over 3 months ago

This article explains how to use the Trade Area Analysis that’s available in the Places section.

This article covers:

  • Using the analytic

  • Reading the visualizations

  • Exporting the data

↳ Using the analytic

The Trade Area Analysis tool focused on a McDonald’s location

Above: The Trade Area Analysis tool focused on a McDonald’s location

This analytic is accessible from the Places section. It is the first analytic after the 'VISTOR ANALYSIS' divider and appears straight after the Historical Visits tool.

You can use the Selection dropdown to switch between the two ways to visualize trade areas:

  • Trade Areas - This visualization displays polygons that represent the home location of core customers.

  • Home ZIP Codes - This visualization displays ZIP codes that are coloured based on the percentage of visitors that live in each.

  • Census Block Groups - This visualization displays census block groups that are coloured based on the percentage of visitors that live in each.

You can use the Date dropdown to select the date range of the analysis. The data is updated quarterly. Each quarter contains data from the trailing twelve months.

On the map itself, there are three buttons. Use the plus and minus buttons to zoom in and out, while the maximize button expands the map.

🛠Troubleshooting: Why is there no data for the place I'm analyzing?

How the analytic looks if data is unavailable

Above: How the analytic looks if data is unavailable

In order to safeguard the privacy of our sample panel, we do not provide trade area analysis for every place in our database. For the analysis to be displayed, a minimum threshold for the number of visitors seen at a location must be met.

If the data is not displaying for a certain place, then the threshold has not been reached.


↳ Reading the visualizations

There are three ways to visualize the trade area of a particular Place:

  1. As Trade Area polygons

  2. As ZIP codes

  3. As Census Block Groups

This section explains how to read each visualization.

1. Trade Areas

The Trade Areas polygons displayed

Above: The Trade Areas polygons displayed

The Trade Areas visualization displays three polygons. These polygons are based on the home locations of visitors that account for a certain volume of visits. There are three polygons displayed:

  • The trade area of visitors who account for 30% of visits

  • The trade area of visitors who account for 50% of visits

  • The trade area of visitors who account for 70% of visits

This visualization shows the core trade area for a given place. Encroaching into this territory would have a significant, negative impact on the place’s performance.

2. Home ZIP codes

Above: The Home ZIP Codes analysis displayed

The Home ZIP Codes visualization displays the home location of visitors as ZIP codes. The color of the ZIP codes indicate the percentage of visitors that live in each one.

As opposed to the Trade Areas visualization, this shows a wider trade area comprising visitors who are not necessarily core customers.

The legend on the left gives the range of percentages for each color. You can also hover over a ZIP code to reveal the specific value.

The ZIP code profile appears when clicked

Above: The ZIP code profile appears when clicked

By clicking a ZIP code, the ‘ANALYZE ZIP CODE’ button appears. This links to its analysis page in the Areas section.

3. Census Block Groups

Above: The Census Block Group visualization

The Census Block Group visualization works in the same way as the ZIP codes visualization. A broad range of census block groups are visible, including the home origins of core and non-core customers.


↳ Exporting the data

The export data modal

Above: The export data modal

You can export the data as an image by clicking the download button in the top right hand corner. That opens up the export data modal displayed above.

A dialog box will open so that you can download the data. Simply enter a filename and click ‘Export’ to download as a .png.

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