Foursquare - Competitive Intelligence
Leveraging Location Data to Boost Competitive Intelligence
The business world has more data at its fingertips than ever before. But having the right data, and knowing how to use that data, is the key to driving smarter, more impactful decision-making.
Putting insights to work for you means being clear on your goals, and you’ve got the right data sources and insights stack to advance them.
And when it comes to competitive intelligence efforts, location data helps businesses gain a more complete picture of the market and their competitive landscape. This empowers organizations to derive deeper insights about their competitors and ultimately drive business success.
According to a Global BCG survey, a significant number of executives said that mapping and geospatial data are important in achieving desired business results today, and 91% feel it will be even more essential in 3-5 years.
Location-based insights are more critical than ever as the economics of business locations have changed. In today’s buy online/pick up in-store world, it’s imperative that businesses understand how location — where to build, buy or rent — plays a part in business success.
It can help businesses know where, how, and when consumers are engaging with their competitors, who these consumers are, what’s important to them - and better still, what can be done to capture their attention. Businesses can also look at things like competitors' customer loyalty and foot traffic patterns to uncover new opportunities.
A recent Forrester study indicates that many data strategy leaders say that location intelligence is important or critical to achieving better outcomes when it comes to competitive analysis and benchmarking.
Location data helps companies obtain business intelligence by answering questions like:
| Question | Insight |
|---|---|
| Which competitors in the areas you operate are losing/gaining market share? | To identify your key competitors at any given time, adapt strategies and capture their target consumer. |
| How is the impact of new market forces or businesses entering a location affecting my business? | To unearth changes in traffic patterns and influences on consumer behavior, giving you the insights needed to adjust to market changes and take advantage of new opportunities based on real world happenings. |
| What types of customers are visiting your competitors? | To get to know your target audience and what matters to them, so you can build marketing campaigns to target and capture your competitors' customers. |
| How many consumers are visiting a competitive location instead of yours or what's overall foot traffic like in the area? | To evaluate your current market share and better understand potential growth. |
| Are consumers traveling out of their way to visit a competitor's location? | To consider the potential for expanding your business in other areas. |
| Where your competitors are opening or closing locations? | To understand the impact of marketplace changes, how this affects consumers and your business, and also inform your retail site selection strategy. |
Meet the Types of Location-Based Data and Tools You Need
Location data matters. It helps your business compare its performance with key competitors, enabling comprehensive analyses by market and demographic, and tracking trends over time.
However, what kind of location metrics should you incorporate into your competitive analysis to make the smartest business decisions possible? Here are the most valuable types - and the kind of intel each provides.
Point of interest (POI) data
POI data can help reveal where your ideal consumer profile goes, which is key to optimizing site selection investment decisions.
Thinking of opening a restaurant in a specific area? Check out how saturated the market currently is for what you’re offering, along with who frequents potential competitors there now (such as locals or tourists), where they come from, and what their interests are based on the other places they visit. Understand patterns (by the hour or day of the week) between restaurants, and more.
The following types of location data can help you gauge whether a market is a good fit:
- Store openings and closures: Which competitors have opened or closed stores recently
- Density of competitors’ locations: Where your competitors are located
- Proximity: The distance between competitors’ locations to other relevant POIs
Visit data
Visit data helps inform your business strategies based on foot traffic data.
If you’re looking to boost sales at a retail location that isn’t performing as well lately, visit data gives you a look at competitors’ visit volume, along with how often they’re visiting, when, and for how long. It can unlock information around pricing structures, extended business hours, or other competitor incentives that resonate with consumers.
The following location intel can help inform future strategies to grab your target audience’s attention in data-backed ways:
- Visit frequency: How often consumers in your target market are visiting competitors’ locations
- Penetration: What proportion of total category visitors are visiting your chain vs. key competitors
- Customer journeys: Where consumers are going before or after visiting competitor locations
- Foot traffic patterns: How visitation to competitors’ locations varies by time of day or day of week
- Catchment areas: How far consumers are traveling to reach competitors’ locations
- Dwell time: How long consumers are spending in competitors’ locations
Explore Visits data
Data visualization tools
Visualizing location data with the help of mapping and analytics tools can provide clear, engaging data representations that give businesses a meaningful look at the competitive landscape.
Investors and developers need to truly understand a market to make informed business decisions. Data visualization can help businesses compare real prices, price changes over time, home sales, and purchases in a certain area on a map. It can also show time on the market or gains and losses among competitors to gauge market viability and the likelihood for success.
The right visualization and analytics tools can help you unlock new insights by allowing you to:
- Explore data over space and time to discover hidden patterns and relationships in your data
- Incorporate other datasets (like demographic data) to create a more complete consumer picture
- Speed up sharing and communication workflows to be able to quickly take action around current data.
Explore FSQ Studio
Choosing the Right Location Technology
Check the quality of the data you’re using.
There’s no shortage of data out there. But if that data isn’t trustworthy, validated, and up-to-date, it won’t advance your business goals. It’s important to use data that protects user privacy and security, too.
Consider how comprehensive the data is.
Relying only on your company data about customer behavior isn’t enough. It takes a combination of first-party and reliable third-party data to create a full picture of how consumers are engaging with other brands—and to identify areas of opportunity.
Choose the right technology and tools.
Having the right geospatial and analytics tools to analyze, visualize, and share the location data you integrate into your competitive analysis is essential. The right tech can make your data more secure, accessible, and actionable.
Find Your Competitive Edge With Foursquare Location Data
As experts in location technology, we know that harnessing the power of real-world data is one of the best ways to attract and retain consumers over your competition.
Connect with our team to learn more.
FSQ/Places
Only Foursquare’s dataset brings together firmographic venue details from authoritative third-party sources and billions of user-generated photos, tips, and reviews from consumer feedback.
Explore Places data. Use Places POI data to gain valuable insights into the competitive landscape and stay ahead of changing consumer demand. Surface potential competitors in an area, learn where your competitors are opening or closing locations, or analyze market saturation to help make the best data-driven decisions for your business.
FSQ/Visits
Understand people’s visits to locations and how they move through the real world, powered by precise stop detection technology.
Explore Visits data. Use Visits to look at visitation to competitors’ locations, as well as businesses that complement yours, to uncover hidden insights, help shape acquisition strategies, and build custom cohorts of users based on traffic to your locations and those of the competition.
CASE STUDY: Coca-Cola
What:
Coca-Cola wanted to identify future vending machine locations and quantify the impact of events on existing locations.
How they use FSQ location data:
Using location data, they were able to answer questions such as:
- What types of retailers and other businesses are in the area?
- What were the most popular locations in a specific area?
- What is the impact of adding new vending machines on existing ones?
- What is the average distance a customer traveled?
From the insights gained, Coca-Cola was able to understand which locations would be best to capitalize on foot traffic and use this information to drive key strategies and decisions, ultimately leading to business success.
CASE STUDY: Yum! Brands
What:
Yum! Brands wanted to understand and quantify nuances in new markets as they sought to expand internationally.
How they use FSQ location data:
They ingested POI data into their decision logic, scoring and ranking site choices based on Places data attributes. Our data offered visual, prescriptive insight into where trade areas are saturated with competition or where they are ideally suited for Yum! Brands to maximize ROI.
Foursquare cleared a key hurdle for Yum! Brands’ expansion into emerging markets, enabling smarter real estate decisions based on location data. As a result, they reduced the time needed to assess the competitive landscape in potential markets and discover, validate, and invest in new locations.
Ready to Get Started?
Understand the world — and how your current and potential customers move through it — with Foursquare.