The Geographical Edge: Spatial Analysis of Retail Loyalty Program Adoption

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates important insights gained by adding spatial capabilities to marketing analyses. Four steps are described to produce a geographically enabled data set of the first year’s daily use for a major retailer’s loyalty card program at one store in a mid-western U.S. city. Traditional analysis is contrasted with results from a geographic information system (GIS). Probabilities of adoption were clearly tied to the geographic variables generated by the GIS; for example, over the whole year, the likelihood of someone adopting on a given day decreased 13.4% for each mile they resided away from the store, while each Innovator (adopted in the first two days) located within .6 mile of a prospective adopter increased adoption likelihood by 13.2%. Further, three very distinct spatial diffusion stages are visible showing adoption as a function of distance to the store itself, to the billboards, and to the earliest adopters.