Use demographic data to study regional markets

You work for a regional convenience store chain, Casey's General Stores. You are hoping to expand your market to the southwest side of your existing territory, and do not want to intrude on the territory of your competitor to the southwest, Allsup's. You will work to gain a better understanding of your chain's region and plan an ideal location using GIS tools, business and demographic data, and the geographic approach. In this tutorial, you will use points of interest search and color-coded maps to examine the data. You will study the chains' territories, examine their sales volume, incorporate projected population numbers, and propose a new market based on your analysis.

This is a fictitious analysis and does not reflect any plans, inside knowledge, business recommendations, or business relationships with those brands that are used in the example.

This tutorial was last tested on April 15, 2025.

Requirements

• User, Publisher, or Administrator role in an ArcGIS organization (see options for software access)
• ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App
• 11 credits

Map convenience store territories

Casey's General Store is a chain of convenience stores headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa. The chain expanded outward from its initial 1968 location in Boone, Iowa, to locations throughout the Midwest. In this section, you'll map the locations of both Casey's and their competitor chain, Allsup's, to learn about their regional patterns.

Set up the project

To get started, you'll create a project in Business Analyst Web App.

1. Open Business Analyst Web App.
2. Sign in to your ArcGIS organizational account.

   Note:

   If you don't have an organizational account, see options for software access.

3. If necessary, close the Welcome or What's new in Business Analyst window.
4. In the upper left corner of the window, click the options button.

   

5. Click Create project.

   

   The Create project window appears.

6. For Project name, type Regional Convenience Store Analysis and add your name or initials.

   

7. Click Create.

   A message explains that a project is being created. The process may take a few moments. When it finishes, a message confirms that the project has been created.

8. Click OK.

   The project appears.

   Note:

   Depending on your organization's settings, the default extent and appearance of your project may differ from the example image.

   You have created a project that you will use in your market analysis.

Map store locations

First, you want to see all the Casey's locations, which are sited primarily in the Midwest. To map the locations, you will perform a points of interest (POI) search.

1. On the ribbon, click Create maps and choose Points of interest (POI) search.

   

   The Points of interest (POI) search pane appears.

2. If necessary, close any messages about new functionality.
3. Verify the following parameters are set:
   • In the Geography section, Current map extent is selected.
   • In the Search section, for Data source,Data Axle is selected.

   

4. Verify that the map is zoomed to the full extent of the United States.
5. Click the Enter keyword, category, etc., type Casey's and press Enter.

   

   The search returns over 4,000 results, not all of which are relevant to your search for the convenience store chain. You will filter only the Casey's locations.

6. For Filters, click Show filters. Expand Company/Business Name and click Casey's (2,675).

   Note:

   The number of Casey's stores may differ as this is a frequently updated dataset.

   

   The map now shows only the Casey's locations.

   

7. Close the Filters window.

   Currently, the points are clustered, but you want to show the individual locations. Next, you'll disable clustering of the points so you can see each location to get a better sense of the chain's territory.

8. In the Legend section, click Casey's.

   

   The Style options window appears.

9. For Cluster points, click the toggle button to turn it off.

   

   On the map, the symbols display each location as a point and are no longer clustered. The points are no longer clustered, but the symbols are too big, and they are all blended. You will decrease the symbol size to you can see the points more easily.

   

10. In the Style options window, for Size, drag the slider to the left until the value is 5, or type 5 and press Enter.
11. On the map, zoom in to the points.

    

    Next, you'll save the points from the points of interest search results to their own layer.

12. In the Points of interest (POI) search pane, click Save layer.

    

13. In the Save layer window, for Layer name, type Casey's General Stores and click OK.

    

    Now that you have a clearer picture of Casey's territory, you'll map another regional convenience store chain, Allsup's, to compare the competitors locations and territory.

Map competitor locations

A big part of expansion is understanding your competitor's territories and where they have business and customers established. Casey's wants to expand to the southwestern United States. Next, you will map the locations of a competitor, Allsup's, to see if the Southwest is a good place for Casey's to expand to. To map the Allsup's locations, you will do a points of interest search as you did to map Casey's.

1. Zoom to the extent of the whole United States.
2. In the Points of Interest (POI) search pane, in the search box, replace Casey's with Allsup's and press Enter.

   

   The clustered points appear on the map.

   

   The search returns around 400 results, not all of which are relevant to your search for the convenience store chain.

3. In the Filters section, click Show filters. Expand Company/Business Name and check the box for Allsup's Convenience Store.

   

   The map now shows approximately 379 Allsup's locations.

   Note:

   The amount of Allsup's locations may vary based on when the data were last updated.

4. In the Points of interest (POI) search pane, for Legend, click the Allsup's symbol.

   You'll disable clustering of the symbols and decrease their symbol size as you did with the Casey's locations.

5. Turn off Cluster points and change the Size property to 5.
6. For Fill color, click the existing color and choose blue.

   

   On the map, the symbols for Allsup's locations are updated.

7. In the Points of interest (POI) search pane, click Save layer. In the Save layer window, for Layer name, type Allsup's Convenience Stores and click OK.
8. Close the Points of interest (POI) search pane.
9. On the ribbon, click the drop-down arrow for the Regional Convenience Store Analysis project, check the box next to Casey's General Stores and click Close.

   

   Now you have a map displaying Casey's and Allsup's locations.

   Now you can see Casey's and Allsup's locations, differentiated by color. Though Casey's is largely a Midwestern chain, it has started to expand into the Southwest with locations in Oklahoma and East Texas. However, Allsup's is prominent in Texas and New Mexico, so those states may not be the best options for Casey's to expand to. Rather than starting a Casey's in a state where there are currently no locations, you may find success by examining states that already contain Casey's.

You have performed two point of interest searches and located and displayed Casey's and Allsup's locations across the United States. Now that you have a better understanding of where the chains are located, you will explore sales volume to determine where sales are the highest.

Examine sales volume

Now you know that expanding to the Southwest is not the best plan, due to Allsup's having many locations. It may be best to expand within the existing regional market. To learn about the top-selling Casey's locations, you'll filter the points of interest layer by the sales attribute and identify the top-selling locations. This will give you an idea of the most successful parts of the market that may be good for expansion.

Filter a layer by sales attribute

You'll filter the Casey's locations by their sales volume attribute to identify where the highest selling stores are within the existing territory. Knowing this information will help determine potential areas for expansion.

1. If necessary, on the ribbon, click the name of your project to view its layers.

   

   The project pane appears and lists all the layers that are in the current project. Under Points of interest (POI) layers, the two layers that you created for Allsup's and Casey's are listed.

   

2. Under Points of interest (POI) layers, for the Casey's General Stores layer, click the options button and choose Filter by attributes.

   

3. In the Filter layer by attributes drop-down menu, choose Sales Volume.

   

   You want to learn more about the 10 or so highest-earning Casey's locations, so you'll filter out the lower end of the sales range.

4. For Sales Volume, under the slider, in the text box on the left, type 7,012,997.

   

   Note:

   You can also drag the slider to adjust the number of candidates that are filtered.

   The display indicates that 11 out of the total number of candidates are filtered out. The attribute table at the bottom of the screen now displays only the selected records.

   

5. In the attribute table, scroll to the right until you see the Sales Volume column. Click the down arrow twice, so the records are sorted in descending order.

   

6. Scroll to the State Name field.

   Notice that in the State Name field that five of the top-sales volume stores are in Iowa.

   

   Since Iowa and contains five of the higher sales volume stores, it may be good places to add another store, but in a part of the state that doesn't already have good coverage.

7. In the Filter layer by attributes pane, click Clear filters.

   

8. Click Done.
9. Under Points of interest (POI) layers, on the Casey's General Stores layer, click the options button and choose Open points of interest search.

   

   The workflow pane appears, displaying the results.

10. Click Show filters and in the Filters window, expand State Abbreviation.

    

11. Scroll and find IA and TN.

    

    Notice that IA (Iowa) has hundreds of stores already, indicating that there may already be enough stores in that state. However, Tennessee also had a couple of the higher sales volume stores, and only contains around 50 stores.

    There are around 50 Casey's locations in Tennessee total, indicating that it may be a good place to continue expanding the chain.

You have filtered the data by sales and identified the state of Tennessee for a new Casey's location. Next, you will study population and demographic data for the counties to see which may be the best fit.

Identify areas for expansion

Though you were initially interested in expanding Casey's market further into the Southwest, it may be difficult to do so without infringing on the Allsup's regional market. Furthermore, your examination of Casey's sales numbers indicates that Tennessee is a strong, but not saturated, market for the chain. You decide to analyze one additional variable to narrow your search in Tennessee.

Create a color-coded map based on projected population

Now that you have determined Tennessee is a good state for another store, you will analyze projected populations for each county to determine the best county for the new store. To visualize the predicted population for each county, you will use a color-coded map to symbolize the counties.

1. On the ribbon, click Create maps and choose Color-coded maps.

   

   The Color-coded maps pane appears. You will set up the color-coded map to use the counties of Tennessee.

2. In the Color-coded maps pane, expand Geography.

   

3. For Analysis extent, type Tennessee and choose Tennessee (State) from the options.

   

   The map zooms to the extent of Tennessee.

4. For Level of detail, click the drop-down menu (that shows Automatic (ZIP Codes)) and choose Counties.

   

   Next you will define the search and include key population and demographic indicators for the counties.

5. In the Variables section, click Browse all variables.

   

6. In the Standard variables section, click Population.

   

   A list of population variables appears. There are many variables, so you can filter them based on keywords, years, and more. You will filter based on the keywords 2029 population. You're using a predictive variable since you're planning for future expansion.

7. For Filter by, for Keyword, click the drop-down menu and type 2029 population.

   

   The variable list now only shows variables with 2029 population in them.

   

8. Scroll toward the bottom of the list and click 2029 Total Population (Esri).

   

   The predicted 2029 population for each county in Tennessee is mapped.

   

   You'll change the color scheme so you can more easily distinguish the Casey's points with the color-coded counties.

9. In the Color-coded maps pane, in the Style section, click Show style options.

   

   The Style options window appears.

10. For Color ramp, click the drop-down menu and choose the ninth color ramp down (a green to blue color ramp).

    

    The counties update with the green to blue color ramp.

    

    Using a color ramp containing greens and blues allows the red location points to stand out better, rather than blend in.

11. Zoom in on the map to explore some of the Casey's locations with the higher projected population counties.
12. In the eastern part of Tennessee, zoom to Knox County.

    

    Notice that there are many Casey's locations in Knox County. Next, you'll explore the results of the color-coded map. You can view the top and bottom five counties for 2029 projected population.

13. On the bottom of the map, click the Expand button to view the Results pane.

    

    The Results pane appears and displays information about the projected population in Tennessee.

    

    The Top 5 indicator draws your attention, as you realize there are many Casey's in Knox County, the third-most populous county in the state that contains the city of Knoxville. There is one location in Davidson County, and there are no locations in Shelby County. These counties could be good locations for expansion as the projected population is high and they are not saturated with other Casey's stores.

14. In the Color-coded maps pane, click Save layer.
15. For Layer name, type Tennessee population 2029 and click OK.

    Another factor that could be important in determining expansion is other convenience stores other than Allsup's. You will do another points of interest search to add other convenience stores.

Add convenience store locations

Next, you will do another points of interest search to show convenience stores in Tennessee as another means to choose a good location for expansion.

1. Collapse the Results pane.
2. On the ribbon, click Create maps and choose Points of interest (POI) search.
3. Expand the Geography section, and in the Analysis extent search field, type Tennessee. Choose Tennessee (State) from the list of results.

   

4. Click the Enter keyword, category, etc. box, click Category.

   

   A window with a list of categories appears.

5. In the categories window, expand Food & Grocery Stores, expand Grocery Stores, click Convenience Stores.

   

6. Click the Search button

   

   You will focus on the most prevalent business, MAPCO, which provides both convenience store amenities and gasoline.

7. In the Points of interest (POI) search pane, click Show filters.
8. Expand Company/Business Name and click MAPCO.

   

9. Close the Filters window and collapse the Results pane.

   

   There are only a few MAPCO locations in Knox County—this perhaps indicates the gap in the market that Casey's was capitalizing on when they opened many stores there.

   In the southwestern part of the state, you'll find Shelby County, which is where Memphis is located. Notice that it has a moderate number of MAPCOs compared to Davidson County (where Nashville is), even though Davidson County is less populous.

   

   Based on the sales information and now the predicted population and MAPCO locations, Knox County may be the best option for expansion. There are only a few locations of the top competitor, MAPCO, high predicted population estimates, and high sales numbers for the Casey's locations in the county.

In this tutorial, you performed several points of interest searches to map businesses' territories and visualize potential locations for expansion. Initially, you were interested in expanding Casey's in the Southwest, but discovered that a top competitor, Allsup's, had already saturated the area. Then, you focused on expanding in Casey's existing territory, mainly in Tennessee because the sales were high. You used a color-coded map to identify the highest predicted population counties and narrowed down the competitor stores to one similar chain that is prevalent in Tennessee. All the data that you used is part of the Business Analyst Web App, so you didn't have to acquire the data or download it from another site; it was available through specific searches. After running a few points of interest searches and visualizing population estimates, you now have some potential counties that would be best for Casey's expansion.

You can find more tutorials in the tutorial gallery.

Acknowledgements

• Esri Demographics data accessed with ArcGIS Business Analyst. Terms of use.

• World Streets Map: Esri, HERE, Garmin, USGS, Intermap, INCREMENT P, NRCAN, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), NOSTRA, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community