We’ve all heard it said at least once before, and, with good reason. Physical location and the locations of individuals play an incredibly important role for businesses in all sectors of industry. This is why more and more companies are turning to location intelligence to help give them an extra edge.
What Is Location Intelligence?
Location intelligence can be defined as “the process of developing thoughtful insights from physical location.” Here at AirSage, we like to define location intelligence as a methodology that allows for the understanding and visualization of location data to help solve a wide variety of business problems. We view this innovation as a tool to unlock never before gained insights and data regarding populations, consumer behaviors, and target markets.
In short, location intelligence takes the guessing game out of the picture. To give you a little more perspective, location intelligence is helping all sorts of companies answer questions like:
* What geographical areas should I focus my marketing efforts on for maximized results?
* Who are my customers, and where do they call home?
* Which market should I venture into next based on where customers are?
* How are people moving in and around my business’s physical location?
* What are my major competitors up to, and how do customers interact with them?
Location intelligence is derived from location-based data. Suppliers gather location data from consumer’s mobile devices with their permission. Protecting user privacy is, and always will be, one of the top priorities for all location intelligence companies. To ensure all consumers are protected, location data is only gathered from devices that have consented to share information. Additionally, no personally identifiable information is collected within the data set.
Retail — Retailers are turning to location intelligence to map foot traffic seen at their stores, determine trends in consumer demographics and shopping behaviors, and to scope out competitors. Retailers also have begun using location intelligence to help them make more informed decisions when selecting a new commercial real estate location.
Tourism & Hospitality — Location intelligence is providing decision-makers within the tourism and hospitality industry much-needed insights regarding who their vacationers are, where they come from, and where they go while in the destination market. These insights help those within the industry to improve their marketing efforts to attract new potential visitors and to assess the efficiency of their targeting efforts.
Higher Education — Data provided by location intelligence companies can be useful for colleges and universities for a wide variety of reasons. The data can be used within various academic studies or used to optimize recruiting efforts.
Transportation — Transportation and city planners can utilize location-based data to help determine how people are moving on various roadways throughout the course of the day. Information such as this plays an important part in infrastructure planning, roadway safety assessments, and more.
