Map convenience stores
Your convenience store chain offers low price amenities, fresh pizza, and gas station services. To understand the best places to open a new store, you first want to understand where convenience stores that perform the same function as yours are located. These stores may be from a competitor brand or even the same brand as your own store. If their service area overlaps with your new store's, it could hurt your store's success.
Note:
This workflow uses real-world data and makes reference to existing convenience store brands. The workflow is for tutorial purposes only and does not reflect any plans, inside knowledge, business relationships or business recommendations with the brands mentioned.
Create a project
You'll create a project in ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App and navigate to your area of interest: the Quad Cities area on the border of Iowa and Illinois.
- Go to Business Analyst Web App.
- If you are not signed in, click Sign In. Sign in with your ArcGIS organizational account.
Note:
If you don't have an organizational account, see options for software access.
Your account must be licensed to use Business Analyst Web App. If you are the administrator of your organization, you can assign yourself a license. Otherwise, you'll need to contact your administrator for permission.
- If necessary, close any What's new window.
Note:
If this is your first time using Business Analyst Web App, you may see a Welcome window asking you to add a profile image. If so, click Skip This Step and click Create Project.
- If necessary, on the ribbon, click Home. Click New project.
- In the Create project window, for Project name, type Quad Cities Analysis and add your name or initials. Click Create.
A message explains that the project is being created. When it finishes, a confirmation message appears.
- In the confirmation window, check Open new projects as soon as they are created and click OK.
Tip:
You can alternatively open your project by closing the confirmation window and finding the project under the Projects tab on the Home page.
The project appears.
Note:
Depending on your organization's settings, the default extent and appearance of your project may differ from the example image.
- On the ribbon, on the search bar, click the drop-down menu and choose Zoom to an area.
You'll zoom to the largest city in the Quad Cities area: Davenport, Iowa.
- In the search bar, type Davenport, IA and press Enter.
The map zooms to the Quad Cities area.
The Quad Cities area spans the Mississippi River. Cities north of the river are in Iowa, while cities south of the river are in Illinois. The four major cities of the Quad Cities area are Davenport in Iowa and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline in Illinois. The area also includes several smaller cities, such as Bettendorf, Iowa, and Milan, Illinois.
This is the area where you are interested in opening a new convenience store.
Search for other stores
You don't want your new store to be within the service area of an existing convenience store that offers similar services, whether this store is another location in the same chain or from a competitor brand. You'll search for and add to the map the locations of these stores.
- On the ribbon, click Create maps.
- Choose Points of interest (POI) search.
The Points of interest (POI) search pane appears. A POI search locates businesses or other points of interest in an analysis area. You can search for businesses based on type of business and even search for specific business brands.
The search can use one of three different POI data sources: Data Axle, which includes business locations in the United States and Canada; SafeGraph, which includes commercial and community locations; and Foursquare, which includes global business data.
You're seeking businesses in the United States, so you'll use Data Axle.
- Confirm that Geography is set to Current map extent and Data source is set to Data Axle.
Next, you'll define the search to encompass convenience stores.
- Under Search, click Category.
- Click Enter category name.
- Expand Food & Grocery Stores and Grocery Stores. Check the box next to Convenience Stores.
The category is added to the pane.
- Click Done. In the Points of interest (POI) search pane, click the search button.
All convenience stores in the area are added to the map. A Results pane appears, indicating the number of locations the search found and some statistical information about the results.
These results include all convenience stores. However, there are many convenience store brands that offer different goods and services than your brand, which provides fresh food and gas station services. You'll filter the results to only include two brands that provide similar functions: Casey's and Circle K.
- In the Points of interest (POI) search pane, under Filters, click Show filters.
- In the Filters window, under By attributes, expand Company/Business Name.
- In the list of business names, check the boxes for Casey's and Circle K.
The filter is automatically applied.
- Close the Filters window and collapse the Results pane.
The map shows only Casey's and Circle K locations in the area.
There are locations throughout the area. From a brief visual exploration, there are few stores in the central area south of the river, where Moline is located. This might be a good place to focus your analysis, though you'll want to get a better understanding of the service areas of these stores first.
- At the bottom of the Points of interest (POI) search pane, click Save layer.
- In the Save layer window, for Layer name, type Existing Convenience Stores. Click OK.
After a few moments, the layer is saved.
Create drive-time areas
When choosing a location for your new store, you don't want it to be too close to any of the existing store locations you've identified. To determine how far your store should be, you'll estimate the service areas of the existing stores.
You'll assume that a convenience store generally services people within a seven-minute drive of its location. To determine what areas this covers, you'll create drive-time areas around each store location.
- On the ribbon, click Quad Cities Analysis.
The project pane appears. It lists all layers associated with your project. The layer you just created, Existing Convenience Stores, is listed under Other layers.
- For Existing Convenience Stores, click the options button and choose Setup layer.
The Setup layer pane appears. It has options to change the filter on the layer and add buffers around the points. There are three types of buffer: rings, drive time, and walk time.
Drive-time areas are buffers that show the areas that can drive to a location within a certain amount of time. They are a good way to estimate the service area of a business, as people usually go to businesses relatively close to where they live.
The amount of time that people are willing to drive for a business varies depending on the type of business. People might be willing to drive an hour or more for a specialized business with no similar businesses in the immediate area. For a convenience store, which offers general goods and services, people likely prefer not to drive for long. You'll create drive-time areas of three, five, and seven minutes around the store locations.
- Under Create buffers around selected points, click Drive time. For Time, change the values to 3, 5, and 7.
You'll make sure the areas are calculated based on the time it takes to drive to the facility, rather than away from it.
- Click More options. Select Toward facility.
- At the bottom of the pane, click Setup layer.
After a few moments, drive-time areas are created around the store locations. Red areas indicate three-minute drive times, green areas indicate five-minute drive times, and blue areas indicate seven-minute drive times.
Note:
Depending on your user preferences, your drive-time areas may have a different style than those in the example images.
Much of the Quad Cities area is within seven minutes of a convenience store. There are two areas that aren't: the northeast corner of Davenport and most of the area in Moline.
Based on these results, Moline seems like the perfect city to build a new convenience store in. You'll focus your subsequent analysis on this city.
Find candidate areas
So far, you've mapped existing convenience stores similar to the one you want to open and created drive-time areas to identify an area that isn't currently serviced by a potential competitor. Having focused your analysis area to Moline, you'll use consumer spending and traffic data to narrow your potential location down to the census block level.
Identify suitable areas
To identify suitable census blocks in Moline, you'll perform suitability analysis. Suitability analysis calculates scores for potential areas based on information about their demographics or consumption habits. Though there are many variables you could use for this analysis (such as population, income, access to vehicles, and so on), for this workflow you'll analyze suitability based on the consumption of products you plan to sell at your store: coffee, soft drinks, lottery tickets, and gasoline.
- On the ribbon, click Run analysis and choose Suitability analysis.
The Suitability analysis pane appears. First, you'll choose the location type for your analysis. When looking at the map, you decided Moline would be a good geography to analyze. Being a city, Moline is a standard geographic area, so you can choose it from a list of geographies.
Tip:
If you were running this analysis in your own area of interest, and the area you wanted to focus on didn't align to a specific city, county, or other geography, you could also perform this analysis based on features on the map. If you want to run this analysis on a custom area, click Define areas and choose Draw polygon. Draw a polygon on the map that covers your area and save it. When performing suitability analysis, choose Your sites as the location type and choose your polygon feature as the site.
- For Select location type, choose Geographies or hexagons.
- Click Next.
- Under Define geography, for Analysis extent, type Moline and choose Moline City, IL.
Moline's city boundaries are drawn on the map. The city is almost entirely outside the service areas of competitor locations, though there are some service areas in the northern and central western parts of the city.
The city is divided into subgroups. These groups are defined by the level of detail. By default, the level is census block groups. This is the smallest possible level of detail for this analysis, which will give you the most detailed results.
- For Level of detail, confirm that Block Groups is chosen.
- Click Next.
Now, you'll choose the analysis criteria. The pane shows many featured and popular demographic variables that can be used as criteria, but you'll create your own list.
- Under Create a list, click Select criteria and choose Add variables from data browser.
The Data browser window appears. It contains thousands of data attributes, organized by category.
- In the search bar, type Convenience Store and press Enter.
A list of variables related to convenience store consumption habits appears. You'll choose four variables based on products you plan to sell at your store.
By default, these variables are calculated by count, which means the results will contain the total number of people in each census block group who bought these items at a convenience store. Because block groups have populations ranging between 600 and 3,000, your results could be weighted toward block groups with more people.
To prevent this, you'll change the variables to instead show the percentage of people who bought these items. This way, your results will indicate block groups where there is consumer interest in convenience stores relative to the population.
- For 2024 Bought Gas at Convenience Store Last 30 Days, select Percentage. Check the box next to the variable.
Note:
You must change the variable type to Percentage before checking the box, or else you'll select the count variable instead of the percentage variable.
- In the list of variables, change the variable type to Percentage and check the box next to the following variables:
- 2024 Bought Soft Drink (Fountain) at Convenience Store Last 30 Days
- 2024 Bought Brewed Coffee at Convenience Store Last 30 Days
- 2024 Bought Lottery Ticket at Convenience Store Last 30 Days
Tip:
If you have difficulty locating the variables, you can filter the search results by keywords such as coffee or lottery.
The button at the top of the window confirms you have selected four variables.
Tip:
If you want to perform this analysis again on a different geography, you can save the variables you've selected to access them again quickly. At the bottom of the window, click Save list. Give the list a name and click Save.
- Click Apply.
The analysis is performed. The census block groups on the map are styled so that more suitable areas are red, while less suitable areas are yellow.
Tip:
If you want to see the map with fewer obstructions, you can collapse the Results pane.
The analysis indicates several highly suitable census blocks in the southern part of the city. There are other suitable census blocks throughout the city.
- At the bottom of the Suitability analysis pane, click Save layer.
- For Layer name, type Moline Suitability Analysis. Click OK.
Investigate traffic patterns
Before you determine the best areas for your new store, you'll consider one final factor: proximity to traffic. Your convenience store will provide gas services, which means it could receive business from commuters who don't necessarily live nearby and thus aren't accounted for in the suitability analysis. An area that has both high local demand for a convenience store and is near a heavily trafficked road will maximize your store's ability to attract customers.
- On the map toolbar, click the Historical traffic data button.
The Historical traffic data window appears. On the map, traffic counts, represented by color-coded circles, are displayed. Circles that are larger and more red indicate areas with more traffic counts. You'll filter the data to only show areas with high traffic.
- In the Historical traffic data window, for Count type, choose Annual daily traffic. for Traffic counts, set the lower range to 20,000.
On the map, the data is filtered. Now, only areas where the annual daily traffic is at least 20,000 vehicles are shown.
- Zoom to the northern part of Moline, where the largest traffic circles are located.
This area is near a bridge that crosses the Mississippi River to Bettendorf, Iowa. This area is within the service area of a competitor store (some parts are even within two overlapping service areas). However, it's only within the farthest parts of the service areas. It's also decently suitable, in addition to being heavily trafficked. Though not the most optimal location, it might be a location worth considering if there are no better candidates.
- Pan down to the southern part of Moline, where several highly suitable census blocks are near one another.
This area looks promising. Not only does it include some of the most suitable census blocks in the city based on local consumption habits, the area has a decent amount of traffic and is outside the service areas of any current competitors.
These census blocks are your top three candidates.
- Close the Historical traffic data window.
Save the candidate sites
Now that you've determined three candidate areas for your store, you'll select them and save them as sites in case you want to perform further analysis on them.
- On the map, click one of the highly suitable census blocks near high traffic in the southern part of Moline.
The census block is selected. You'll select the other two, also.
- Press Shift. Click the other two suitable census blocks.
- In the pop-up, click Create sites.
You have the option to change the style of the sites before you create them. The default style is fine.
- Click Create 3 sites.
The sites are saved to the project's default geographies layer.
- On the ribbon, click Quad Cities Analysis.
The project pane appears. The My geographies layer, which contains the sites you saved, is now turned on.
- For My geographies, click the options button and choose Rename item.
- Rename the layer to Candidate Census Blocks.
The sites are now saved and properly identified among your other layers.
In this tutorial, you identified candidate areas for a new convenience store using Business Analyst Web App. First, you mapped existing stores in your area of interest that offer similar services. You created drive-time areas around the competitors to estimate their service areas. Based on gaps between the service areas, you narrowed your analysis to Moline, Illinois. You then performed suitability analysis on the city based on the population's consumption habits. After comparing the results to traffic areas, you determined three highly suitable candidate areas for your store.
This analysis could be performed accounting for a variety of additional factors. For instance, you could have also added gas stations to the POI search you performed, or performed your suitability analysis using many additional demographic variables. When selecting the best location for your own business, it's good to determine what variables are most important before beginning your analysis. You're encouraged to try this analysis for a different type of business in a different area of interest.
You can find more tutorials in the tutorial gallery.
