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sales cannibalisation analysis
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United Kingdom
Sales cannibalisation: will a new store take from your others?
Measure catchment overlap and shared visitors between your UK stores, before and after an opening, and put it next to your own sales data.
Get a free analysis of your locations
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.
We handle your details in line with UK GDPR.
Sales cannibalisation happens when a new or existing store takes trade from your other branches instead of winning new customers. Huq helps you see it coming and measure it afterwards, without guessing. You see how much two stores' postcode catchments overlap, how many visitors they share, and how footfall at nearby branches changes after an opening. Your own sales data then tells you what that shift is worth.
Checking sales cannibalisation in Huq
The overview doesn't model cannibalisation, but it shows the tools you would use. Look at the catchment and travel-time layers on the Explore map, which show where two stores draw from, and at Projects, where footfall at existing branches is tracked over time. Your own sales figures then put a value on any shift.
- Overlay catchments of an existing store and a proposed site to see shared postcodes.
- Use cross-visitation to count visitors shared between up to 10 location pairs.
- Track footfall at nearby branches week by week after an opening.
Trusted by 300+ organisations · Data across 35 markets
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What is sales cannibalisation?
Sales cannibalisation is when one of your stores takes sales from another of your stores, rather than from competitors or new demand. It is most common when a chain opens close to an existing branch, or when one store is refitted or expanded and draws customers from its neighbours.
UK chains usually ask two questions. Before an opening: how much of the new site's catchment already shops at our nearby stores? After an opening: did footfall at the existing branches fall, and by how much? Answering both needs data on where visitors come from and which stores they use.
Huq doesn't measure sales. It gives you catchment overlap, cross-visitation and footfall trends for any UK address, weekly. You combine those with your own sales figures to estimate and then confirm cannibalisation.
What's in your sales cannibalisation analysis
01
Catchment overlap
Postcodes that feed both the existing store and the new or proposed site, mapped side by side.
02
Shared visitors
Cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs, showing how many visitors use both stores.
03
Before and after footfall
Weekly footfall at nearby branches before and after an opening, compared with their retail centre trend.
04
Travel-time reach
Drive-time and travel-time areas in miles, to see where catchments meet and where they don't.
What a sales cannibalisation check shows
Three views from a typical cannibalisation review for a new UK opening.
01
Overlapping catchments
Two stores' postcode catchments on one map, so you can see which postcodes feed both.
02
Visitors who use both
Cross-visitation shows the share of one store's visitors who also visit the other.
03
Impact on existing branches
Footfall at nearby stores tracked weekly after the opening, against their high street or centre, to separate cannibalisation from wider trends.
Sales cannibalisation analysis for any UK location
Huq covers any address in the UK: high streets, shopping centres, retail parks, competitors' stores and sites you haven't opened yet. No counters, sensors or cameras needed.
Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year, and data refreshes weekly.
How it works
Step 1
Tell us your locations
Add up to five addresses in the form. Your own stores, candidate sites or competitors.
Step 2
We run the analysis
Our team maps each location from observed visitor data.
Step 3
We walk you through it
A short call to take you through what the data shows and what it means for you.
Why UK chains use Huq to check sales cannibalisation
- Huq publishes its accuracy by country: an 18.7% median error in Great Britain against landlord-reported footfall.
- JD Sports, a UK retailer, got 25% more precise catchment analysis and 18% lower new-store location risk.
- Ripon BID saw footfall up 164% year on year.
- Trusted by 300+ organisations across 35 markets, including the global insights, research and location intelligence teams at Nike, Adidas, JD Sports and Samsung.
huq's platform gave us valuable data to support a key decision on potential new sites.
Dan Brogden
National Sales Manager, Puccinos
Who it's for
01
Retail chains of any size
From five-store retailers planning their next site to global brands: choose locations, track store performance and benchmark against competitors.
02
Retail property owners
Show centre performance, support leasing and get the tenant mix right, for landlords, asset managers and brokers.
03
Investors and private equity
Check how retail brands and assets actually perform before you buy, and monitor them after.
Everything Huq measures, in one platform
- Footfall: by week, month and year, with totals, average daily footfall, trends, period-on-period change, and visiting vs passing traffic.
- Residents and visitors.
- Catchment and travel time: catchment by postcodes, plus drive-time and travel-time analysis.
- Demographics and profiling: age, gender and purchasing power.
- Behaviour: visit frequency, dwell time, time of day and dayparts, cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs, and international visitation for tourism.
- Footfall density and transportation mode.
- Places, brands and industries: points of interest, brand locations and brand analysis, industry performance, shopping centre and retail centre types.
- Geo-spend: spend by volume and category at any UK location, via Experian.
- Tools: the Explore map (draw any area or use layers for travel time, catchment, shopping centres, retail centres, brand locations, industries and postcodes), White Space Analysis, and Projects for monitoring many locations and reporting to stakeholders.
- Delivery: the platform, CSV or Excel exports, monthly PDF location reports, and data feeds as Parquet and CSV files into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets.
- Cadence: data refreshes weekly.
Frequently asked questions
What is cannibalisation in business?
Cannibalisation is when a company's new product, channel or store takes sales from its own existing ones instead of winning new customers. In retail it usually means a new branch drawing customers from a nearby store in the same chain, so total sales rise less than the new store's takings suggest.
How do you calculate sales cannibalisation?
Compare sales at existing nearby stores before and after an opening, adjusted for the wider trend, then divide the lost sales by the new store's sales. Huq supplies the location side: catchment overlap, shared visitors and footfall change at nearby branches against their retail centre.
How can you predict cannibalisation before opening a store?
Look at how much of the proposed site's catchment already visits your nearby stores, and how far apart they are in travel time. High catchment overlap and many shared visitors point to higher cannibalisation risk. Huq shows both for any UK address before you sign.
Does Huq measure my stores' sales?
No. Huq measures footfall, catchment and cross-visitation, not sales. You combine those with your own sales data to put a value on cannibalisation. PizzaExpress took the same approach across 370+ UK stores, using Huq's monthly footfall beside its own sales to separate location problems from operational ones.
How often is the data updated, and where does it cover?
Huq data refreshes weekly and covers any address in the UK, including high streets, shopping centres, retail parks and sites you haven't opened yet. Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year.
Can I get a free cannibalisation check?
Yes. Send us an existing store and a proposed site, or a recent opening, and we'll return a free analysis of your portfolio showing catchment overlap, shared visitors and footfall trends at the nearby branches.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoAbout Huq
Huq is a location intelligence company. We turn anonymised mobile location data into footfall, catchment and visitor insight for any place, so retailers, property owners and local authorities can make decisions on evidence.
See how your locations really perform
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.