Location choice in practice

Abstract

The retail world is under high pressure and is changing rapidly. Throughout the years location strategy has gained more importance among retailers. At the same time the availability and importance of data increased. Retailers are now, more than ever, willing to invest more capital in gaining better insights to reduce the investment risks. This particular research investigates the role of quantitative data in the location choice process among Dutch retailers. Furthermore this thesis discusses if quantitative data is decisive, how quantitative data is used in daily practice and the different reasons why retailers are using quantitative data. The different retailers who participated in this research see that there is more data available to use and retailers are setting up different initiatives to work with quantitative data to make better business decisions. Retailers are mainly using data to reduce the risks of making a wrong investment. Quantitative data also justifies an important decision. A decision which is, in most cases, based on intuition and experience. Although retailers clearly see the importance of data, not everything can be expressed in data. Experience and a person’s observations are still very valuable.