Now available for the UK market, MapInfo Retail PITCHPOINT provides a quantitative measure of the strength or weakness of pitch locations within premium retail centres across the country, guiding property agents to the right micro locations and, when used in a predictive model, helping to explain the effect of a retail pitch on store performance.
The launch of MapInfo Retail PITCHPOINT will be of significant interest to high street retailers, convenience businesses, town centre planners, local authority planners and landlords with retail tenants looking to improve their understanding of micro location, in-store performance and
retail centre planning.
Key features include a measure of retail pitch strength in the top 3,170 UK retail centres, the ranking of retail centres with a decile score of best and worst locations and the ability to create pitch heat maps of target locations and overlay of individual store networks.
Commenting on the benefits of MapInfo Retail PITCHPOINT, Stuart Hayes, Head of Network & Location Planning, Post Office Ltd, an early adopter of the dataset, said: “Retail PITCHPOINT helps Post Office Ltd. to identify which city centre branches are in the strongest and weakest locations in a retail centre. Using this classification of retail pitch really helps the business understand the context of “micro-retail location” and its influence on branch performance.”
When linked with company network plans, Retail PITCHPOINT can quickly identify which retail centres have enough critical retail mass to support any given store, and this insight can be used to guide agents and location planners to the retail pitches with the greatest potential for further investigations.
“With increasing pressure on national and global managers to make the right decisions, Retail PITCHPOINT can provide a competitive site profile of both a company’s stores and its competitors. This will ensure that any micro location effects are being measured against store performance and help companies to understand if pitch strength can explain their best and worst performers,” said Andy Thompson, director of analytical services, MapInfo EMEA.
