Thursday, April 16. 2009

Assault on Geodemographics and Business GIS

Michael Fassnacht, in an article published by Advertising Age (April 13) entitled, "The Death of Consumer Segmentation," put on a full frontal assault challenging the use of geodemographics and marketing segmentation, and by association business GIS. He references a "well-known fashion retailer" (but doesn't name names) that supposedly spent big bucks on, what I assume, was a desktop mapping system replete with demographics and psychographic data. He makes the following points:

1. "The rather static definition of consumer segments is becoming less
   reliable in our extremely volatile society, especially in today's economic climate. A consumer's lifetime value may have decreased
   significantly in the past six months, a fact not reflected by any segmentation method."
2. "Consumers are never just part of one segment. Rather, they feel, rightfully, that they belong to a multitude of segments. They can be the professional executive in the morning, the boyish sports fan in the evening, the churchgoing father figure on Sunday."
3. "Consumers are gaining more control of any marketing activity...they like to receive relevant information, but even more, they prefer to choose their own relevant information"

He goes on to reference Apple and Amazon that don't bet the farm on market segmentation. "[They] are not masters of consumer segmentation but experts in building relevant products that consumers choose. Their marketing communication is segment-based but does not depend on pursuing an ever-increasing level of micro-segment-specific relevance. They are far more focused on building and communicating relevance relationships than in micro-segmenting consumers."

So, Fassnacht appears to be arguing, not to abandon micro-marketing, but to say that much finer market segmentation may be necessary, and, as he describers, consumers engage in "self-segmentation." I would argue that in our mobile society we are much more geographically disperse and at any given time will be or should be marketed to in both a geospatial and time-relevant context. Hence the boom in location-based advertising. What we as marketers need is a better way of capturing the geographic dispersion of the marketing and the means to target appropriate messages.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence, Demographics at 09:03 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, April 14. 2009

Dislocation Intelligence

James Kobielus of Forrester Research talks about "dislocation intelligence", that is, the use of GIS and location intelligence by retailers and other corporations to concoct their exit strategies from cities such as Detroit that have fallen victim to economic distress. The result is, of course, vacant storefronts and the "unmalling" of America. I think its a great twist of phrase.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence at 10:38 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Podcast: Gathering Data from the Asia Pacific Region-Obstacles and Successes

Geospatial data are relatively easy to obtain in the U.S. but what about in the Asia Pacific region where government policy differs widely from country to country. In fact, today’s challenges in the region have moved from acquiring the spatial foundation data (streets, basic demographics, and political boundaries) to data with finer demographic and geographic granularity. Editor in chief Joe Francica spoke with Sean Richards, director of product management for Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI) in Brisbane, Australia, and Scott Robinson, director of global data products for PBBI about the obstacles to success and whether countries recognize the benefit of a more open data policy.
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Posted by Joe Francica in PBBI [MapInfo], Location Intelligence, Podcasts, Special Topics Podcast, Data, Demographics at 06:07 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, April 13. 2009

Korem Acquires Primus Geographics

Today, we learned that Quebec-based Korem has acquired Primus Geographics, a Colorado consulting company that provides location intelligent solutions. The move establishes a US foothold for Korem and broadens the scope of their operations by jump-starting their sales operations among major US corporations that were Primus Geographic clients. Both companies shared many common partnerships with the larger geospatial software and data companies such as Pitney Bowes Business Insight (MapInfo) so the fit appears to be a good match that will smooth the integration of personnel and technology. An official announcement will be made tomorrow.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence, Geospatial Business at 12:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, April 6. 2009

LI Poll - Choose the Key Topic You Want to See Discussed

The Location Intelligence Conference call for presentations was issued last week. But, if you are a member of LinkedIn, here's your chance to provide us some immediate feedback on key topics. Take a quick poll on the topics of interest to you. Here's the question:

What key topics do you want to see at the Location Intelligence Conference?

• Open Source LI/BI integration
• Spatial data appliances
• Location technology APIs
• Cloud computing and GIS
• Spatial Asset Intelligence

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence at 09:17 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, April 1. 2009

New, Old Geospatial Players Team to Tackle Telco

Pitney Bowes Business Insights (aka MapInfo) and Netezza, a spatial data appliance provider, announced a teaming agreement today at CTIA to tackle the telecommunications marketplace, mostly. It appears that the relationship will broaden to include other industries as well. It's yet more proof that the new and old geospatial technology providers are joining forces to prepare for what I believe is a new wave of enterprise adoption in the location intelligence space. And, as a result, more emphasis is being placed on managing geospatial datatypes in as part of the IT infrastructure.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence at 11:42 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |