STORES Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 62)

NUTS AND BOLTS / SITE SELECTION Spatial Profiling MapInfo helps La Curacao find its target customers BY MICHAEL HARTNETT L a Curacao has opened 10 department stores in Southern California and Arizona since 1980 on the strength of its most loyal customers – first- and second-generation Hispanics, many of them undocumented. Through multiple points of contact — everything from credit card and loyalty programs to travel and telephone services and Internet access — La Curacao pays close attention to the demographic group that drives its success, especially when it comes to real estate issues that affect store locations. “Our customers refer to us as the ‘Hispanic Best Buy,’” says Jeff Forman, manager of real estate for La Curacao. “We are take us in the right direction.” Other pertinent details include a population group’s annual income, typical spending, average ticket size and credit worthiness. “MapInfo will define a trade area for us, but it’s not easy to find a centroid location for our 100,000-sq.-ft. stores, Forman says. “We might have to look two or three miles away from the preferred location and, with that change, we might be going in the wrong location — away from our core customers.” La Curacao recently called on MapIn- the go-to store for electronics, appliances and home goods.” La Curacao uses its myriad means of contact to understand where its customers live, how far they are willing to travel to shop, the kinds of products they buy most often, ways that the current population could grow — and in which directions. To make sense of all that data, La Curacao brought in location intelligence technology from Pitney Bowes MapInfo. The company begins its search for potential new locations by targeting areas with 250,000 Hispanics. “Our cus62 STORES / AUGUST 2008 Pitney Bowes MapInfo develops a profile of La Curacao’s customers based on 200 demographic characteristics tomers are primarily the first and second generation, and you can’t find that information in other demographic sources,” Forman says. “MapInfo is able to take this information and drill down to where that firstgeneration Hispanic consumer is and fo for guidance in a marketing program, as well. “We were trying to target a mailer in the Phoenix market, so we used them to identify the ZIP codes with the highest potential for having our customers,” Forman says. “We were sending a big brochure, and we wanted to streamline our mailer. If we were off the mark, we wouldn’t get the best bang for our buck.” La Curacao also has MapInfo put together “a customer profile analysis for us once every other year for all the markets we might be interested in, and WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - August 2008

STORES Magazine - August 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page The Lure of Free Shipping Walmart’s New Look What Shoppers Think Will Widgets Work for Wheat Bread and Wasabi? 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Store Design Industry Economics Hot 100 Retailers Concept2Watch Mobile Technology Small Store Technology Website Optimization Site Selection Mobile Payments Recycling Merchandising: Cool Sells Merchandising: Merchandising in Mexico Store Construction & Development Human Resources Loyalty Programs Mobile Marketing Loeb Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - August 2008

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