week 8: choosing a store site in San Francisco

This week we looked at two more ways of defining market area: by the sales figures within a radius around the store, and by drive time to the store. In fact if one was looking at a potential store site in downtown San Francisco, drive time may be less relevant because - especially for something like bookstores, and in a city that is as walkable as San Francisco - probably a significant proportion of buyers are walking to the store. However "drive time" could be altered to walking time without much difficulty.

So far the assignment is pretty straightforward, although I can see that determining the best store site is going to be tricky because each potential site is good in some important areas (e.g. high population growth) but bad in others (e.g. lower household income).

This week two maps were the products. One shows market area measured by drive time and by the proportion of store sales. The other shows the location of potential available stores as well as the location of current competitors.