Don’t make decisions without the data. We break down the reasons why location intelligence is essential for retailers looking to super-charge their strategy.

The last three years have not been kind to retail. A constant tide of circumstances beyond – for the most part – the direct control of the retail industry, has influenced footfall traffic, business rates, right through to the spend of consumers once they hit the high streets, retail parks and shopping centres. The tides are, however, receding – and by grasping the opportunities available in location data, retail leaders can make informed decisions that win them market advantage. As a leader in the location-based insights space, Huq is here to empower retail industry organisations with the strategic intelligence to create environments that attract more returning customers, and ultimately uptick sales. Think of us as your personal solution-based advisor. We tailor our approach to your business to drive improved sales results.

Let’s get into it.

In November 2023, the UK’s British Retail Consortium (BRC) – informed by destination data – observed that consumers are moving away from shopping around; less seduced by the lowest prices, and instead focus-purchasing and paying more to “buy less”. Consumers are adjusting to the inflation-driven cost of living crisis and are making strategic decisions when purchasing. Industry leaders, the BRC concluded, could do well to concentrate efforts on customer loyalty and reaching consumers earlier, to earn customer loyalty and get customers returning more frequently to spend more.

Understanding this shift in consumer behaviour wouldn’t be possible without consumer, location-based data. And this is where Huq comes in. We are the leading provider of rich and real-time geospatial data that can help leading retail strategists stay ahead of the curve, and even predict consumer behaviour to achieve a competitive advantage.

Our cutting-edge platform harnesses unrivalled, first hand and third-party global sources to deliver unrivalled insights to our clients. Our unique research data sets, summarised below, ensure you are capturing the right store performance metrics will inform site selection and store KPI evaluation. All delivered with up-to-date accuracy, in real-time.

Let’s dive in.

Our footfall traffic insights can be tailored within our user-friendly, dashboard to provide hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual footfall data – right down to a specific location. We have historic location data going back over 5 years – enabling you to look at the curve of behaviour and determine trends. Learn how your local area is being visited and unlock how to best deploy location-based marketing, most accurate sales forecasting, and surface the potential for the best stores.

Pinpoint the busiest regions in a nominated space. Understanding density of visitors highlights the underutilised areas of your space and opportunities for improved utilisation.This localised intelligence can be used to inform retail expansion strategies and geo-targeting the most optimum consumers.

Once more, beyond footfall, it’s vital to understand how long individuals are spending in a given place and space. The propensity to shop and spend after all relies on consumers sticking around, and understanding dwell time-to-conversion presents a major advantage. Our dwell time data could be used to inspire retail spatial analysis strategies, as well as leading to customer behaviour and competitor location analysis – and even collaboration.

By connecting visitors to geographic movement and – anonymised – demographic detail, retailers can better hone demographic segmentation for products and services. Here’s how you can distinguish which consumer demographics are attracted to some spaces more than others. The combined quantitative and qualitative scope of this data set will empower your operational, financial and marketing teams to create strategies for success.

Don’t take our word for it, we work with some of the market’s largest retailers and hospitality merchants who use our proprietary data insights to make informed strategic decisions that support better business. One such client is JD Sports, who utilised our Catchment Areas insights to measure the size and fit of consumer opportunity. This drives decisions when assessing new store locations – taking into account competitive influence intelligence and the potential impact on nearby outlets – so as not to cannibalise existing customer segments.

This is a significant step-change for JD Sports when comparing data to, say, more generalised drive-time catchment information. As Alastair Browne, Group Head of Site Research and Strategic Insight at JD Sports puts it, “Huq’s Catchment Insights allows JD to more accurately assess the impact of the wider retail catchment area of the sales potential of new store opportunities.”. With 900 store locations, and annual revenue of £10.12bn, Huq’s core products for retail are a staple, and invaluable, tool for JD Sports to remain competitively advantageous.

JD Sports’ CEO, sums it up even more simply…

Huq’s catchment analysis forms a key role in our new store approval process.”

Our customer success team works directly with you to ensure alignment with your aims and business objectives, providing a solid environment to create strong strategies and make game-changing decisions. We will support you to create compelling data-driven narratives that support your initiatives for stakeholders including Board, C-suite, internal, external partners and colleagues.

Huq is trusted by over 300 partners, including major retailers, news institutions, the top 5 real estate brands, over 100 Government organisations, and internationally esteemed university research teams. Our experience demonstrates you’re in safe hands when it comes to leveraging crucial cutting-edge technologies – made straightforward by our experienced and personable team.

Imagine a world where uncertainty fades away, and every decision you make is backed by precision. Huq steps in as your partner, meticulously confirming the potential of new locations through both quantitative and qualitative success criteria. No longer will a location’s performance remain a mystery; Huq unravels the truth through side-by-side ranking with direct sales-informing metrics. Analysing trends across diverse timelines empowers you to discern correlations and take decisive actions with confidence. With a centralised view of all your locations, delve deeper into demographics and competitor capture rates, enabling unparalleled insights for your strategic planning.

In the realm of market expansion, Huq emerges as your indispensable ally, elevating your strategy with real-time insights to identify and monitor potential locations for exponential revenue growth. Gain an unparalleled advantage by being the pioneer in discovering burgeoning areas before your competitors, supported by Huq’s cutting-edge data. With precision, Huq crafts a curated list of high-quality expansion sites grounded in real-time data insights, ensuring every decision is underpinned by accuracy and trust. Benchmarking crucial KPIs becomes effortless, guiding your vital decisions with a firm foundation of reliable data. Huq isn’t just about expansion; it’s about understanding consumer behaviour intricacies, refining development projects through in-depth consumer movement analysis. Huq empowers you to boost sales predictions, seize lucrative opportunities, and sculpt an expansion strategy that leads the market.

Huq presents the gateway to unlocking the full potential of your existing portfolio, transcending traditional strategies to meticulously optimise and maximise your investments. Seamlessly identifying gaps and circumventing cannibalization, Huq’s data is built to help you ensure peak performance across your entire estate. It’s not just about identification; Huq delves deep into customer behaviours, distinguishing between successful and unsuccessful patterns to guide your decision-making. Picture a comprehensive ranking of potential locations, empowered by sales-informing metrics that validate your strategies against a myriad of metrics, guaranteeing confidence in every move. Huq doesn’t just stop at identification—it captures your target audience precisely where they are, enabling swift and assured action driven by real-time data. Don’t let opportunities slip away; Huq illuminates the metrics underlying store triumphs or setbacks, giving you the power to optimise and elevate your portfolio to unprecedented heights of success.

Retailers must be increasingly demonstrative of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments, and transparent to an ever-demanding consumer and colleague base. New and existing customers smell, see, and sense any deviation from authenticity. And they let retailers know their disapproval through their purchase power, spending with social conscience.

Pinpoint prime investments with data-driven decisions. We explain how location intelligence can unlock the keys to the right real estate – for investment and development that delivers.

In a market that is riddled with complexity – perceived and real – location intelligence helps real estate industry leaders gain vital competitive advantage and cut-through clarity. Huq understands this data more than anyone. Some of the challenges facing the real estate sector you’ll be familiar with include rising inflation and spiralling interest rates (now, thankfully coming down or at least stabilising), the long tail impact of Covid 19 on decentralisation, and – of course – regulatory factors.

Post-Covid working, as an example, has led to a substantial flow of people and resources away from dense urban areas and into suburbs and even further afield. As ‘the local’ is experiencing a revival, the business district and so its property market – particularly commercial – faces a decrease in demand. How then does a portfolio property investor / developer choose the optimum space to purchase?

As ever, location intelligence and live demographic data is key. Real estate data insights have traditionally focused on conventional metrics like occupancy rates, rental fees paid by tenants, and local market trends. More recently however, there’s a growing appreciation of the power of non-traditional variables – like the growth and positioning of local pop ups and stores (think the proliferation of indie coffee shops), localised online reviews (Google, Yell, Trusted Reviews, and app-based Swarm – that was once Foursquare). It also pays to explore any influx into an area of businesses, retail, and hospitality; the latter would not open up if it wasn’t confident there’d be people willing to part with cash for their croissants, carrot cake, or Calamari.

Let’s look at Wimbledon town centre as a microcosm of this. Covid became the death knell for many of the brands associated with casual footfall in this south-west London town, better known for its serve than its shopping to be fair. Sure enough, its prime retail complex, Centre Court, became a ghost mall of boarded doors and white-misted windows. The Broadway high street also suffered terribly. However, post-Covid and – we’re certain – the result of a smart evaluation of localised intelligence, catchment demographics, and geospatial data, has led to an incredible property development investment (plaudits to Romulus, the group in question); and the christening of the new ‘Wimbledon Quarter’. There has been a disassociation of the old mall from its tennis tournament neighbour, and replacement with a new vibrant space for an economically mobile, and greener-leaning demographic to “connect, engage, and thrive”.

Gone are the brand staples, which are catered for either in retail parks, nearby towns, and a huge consumer pivot to online. In their stead is a bespoke wall-climbing franchise, an indoor golf entertainment and light food-driven enterprise, and a large seasonal pop-up area – currently hosting a modest ice rink, and crepes and Christmas gifts outlets.

Only intensive, but user intuitive, analysis of location data and demographics informs decision making to invest in the right kind of property development. We’re sure (even) more housing will follow.

This is but one example. There is also a widely reported growing ageing population in the UK, which in turn presents challenges for accommodation for this demographic – as multi-generations may have to live together, and care environments bulge and bend at the seams. This market is well worthy of exploring, to help deliver best in class real estate to build communities and support individuals and families – through dignity, independence and affordable housing.

These factors can be refined and improved by adding even more layers of location-based data, via Huq’s expertise and market-leading tools.

Let’s look at some examples:

Which areas, centres, businesses get the most foot traffic, and which ones get the least? Which ones are on the up versus declining?

This data can identify what kinds of stores’ customers visit a given area or district. Are there out-of-the-way venues that are popular also, that could be reached by a close drive or transport? These are all decisions forming values.

How many people visit a business area? How long did they spend there? How does current foot traffic compare to last year or to 2021 and even before Covid? Which days are the most crowded? These are all key indicators for real estate investors that can support making sound, informed judgements – where premium investment is vital.

By capturing geographic movement and – anonymised – demographic detail, developers and investors can see live and historic detail on demographic segmentation; aiding real estate market forecasting as to who these groups are and what they care about.

There are a myriad of ways Huq’s core location expertise could help identify successful investment strategies for property location optimisation, including:

As we’ve talked about, areas visitors’ insights can power decisions and identify promising real estate site selection; and observe and capitalise on property investment trends.

Target the right stakeholders through real estate market insights.

See where you stand based on market intelligence, gleaned from location intelligence solutions.

Attracting tenants and finding the right vacant units through real estate market research.

We want to help ensure property site selection is low(er) risk: i.e., repeatable, and data-driven. These factors can be refined and improved by adding even more layers of location-based data, via Huq’s expertise and market-leading tools.