Enhancing estate strategies in the UK & Europe by using Acorn & Retail Markets

Background:

This prominent global apparel and home goods retailer, with decades in operation and hundreds of stores in the UK, Europe and worldwide, was seeking new site locations to bolster their European planning strategy. They quickly realised that they would need to gain access to secure and reliable data in order to better understand their customer demographic profiles to inform their location planning strategy and optimise their store network.

Challenge:

The ability to leverage precise data would help the business combat several challenges, including:

• Accurately predicting core and secondary catchments for new site locations
• Building up a profile of customers in the business’ existing catchments
• Identifying gaps in the market, even with a high amount of existing coverage
• Exploring new markets and determining the suitability of new site locations

Solution:

With a necessity of acquiring robust data that would support an initial estate strategy for the UK, the retailer chose to licence Acorn and Retail Market data. Their reliability and comprehensive coverage of the UK, high levels of detail across population profiles that supply detailed insights into new site locations, the confidence of working with a provider that would provide accurate and up-to-date sociodemographic data and the ongoing support and consultancy that CACI would provide along the way made the licencing decision an easy one.

Acorn’s breakdown of each postcode sector highly supported catchment planning by supplying innate insight into the demographics of the population within the business’ predicted catchments. It allowed the business to generate catchments and choropleth maps showing the distribution of people in varying Acorn groups. This enhanced their understanding of the affluence and economic activity of larger areas and in detail at postcode sector level.

Retail Markets data also helped the business understand the shopping population rather than just the population of the town. This indicated how large the catchment areas should be and how far people would travel to visit certain shopping destinations. It also provided a ranking and index value to illustrate the popularity and competition amongst various shopping and retail parks across Europe.

Results: 

1. Through CACI’s data and consultancy, the business successfully planned for their European store openings. The geodemographic data providing in-depth insight used for board report presentations to get sign-off on new stores.
2. The business’ access to Retail Markets data continues to support their growth and their ability to identify any gaps in the market.

Outcomes/Future:

The retailer is keen to continue partnering with CACI to ensure ongoing success with their European operation plans. They are confident that CACI will help them further explore new markets as they continue to grow, and that CACI will continue to review and support any necessary strategic adaptations as technology and the retail market evolve.

For more information, get in touch and one of our data experts will happily arrange a time to talk.