GEO-SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND RETAIL: BRINGING SATELLITE DATA AND CONSUMER DETAILS TO INDIAN RETAIL

Geographic Information Systems or to cover a broader aspect of Geo-Spatial analysis, are changing the way businesses are done across the world. The number of satellites that was launched in the latter half of the previous century and all the investment that went into geographic and spatial is now bearing fruits trying to minimize the error rates in the business models. The “birds eye” is slowly becoming an important planning and strategic tool for management to take decisions. One industry that is reaping most of this innovation globally is the retail industry. Use of data in the retail industry is not new as retailers have been using a variety of data set from finding new locations to getting in more footfalls. They have been playing around data and draw insights to learn about customers and provide them with better service. But with changing times and retail business models, those data sets provide a limited scope to judge and make decisions. This is creating demand for new data sets that can provide access to deeper and more precise consumer-behaviour data. While the Indian market is witnessing a rapid change in retail consumer behaviour and newer and newer retail channels are being established, the geospatial analysis could be a big boon for businesses to clobber down their error rates as well as help them maximize their sales and generate a formidable customer base.