4.3 (Optional Activity) Exploring Your Own Market, Part 2

Psychographic/Behavioral Analysis and Incorporate Reports

Follow this optional exercise to hone your BAO skills, gain additional insights to a location intelligence platform, or use to expand your understanding of site selection.

Using BAO, return to your analysis/critique of your Claritas PRIZM results. You're going to add to the demographic work you did in section 3.3 of Lesson 3 by looking at Tapestry Segmentation, amongst other reports.

Your goal here is to further strengthen the argument you made last week concerning the accuracy or inaccuracy of your Claritas PRIZM results. Again, I recommend you focus on your PRIZM segment(s) to keep this analysis simple. Also, please make sure you start with ZIP code data, only turning to smaller level geographies, if you wish, to underscore your argument.

Requirements:

• Run at least two reports for your ZIP code level analysis.

• Run a "Tapestry Segmentation Area Profile" report on your ZIP code to rank the segments which make up your specific ZIP code. Use this report to identify top segments and make your comparisons to your Claritas PRIZM results.
  • NOTE: to be fair to the oversimplified Claritas PRIZM "You Are Where You Live" tool, please focus on the top 5 Esri Tapestry segments first. Don't forget; your Claritas PRIZM results were NOT ranked, but delivered to you in alphabetical order.
  • If you took issue with the ZIP code level results of the PRIZM tool, run the "Tapestry Segmentation Area Profile" on your tract and/or block group and see if your results (segments) more accurately match YOU.
  • In comparing your Tapestry segments to PRIZM segments, don't forget to consider how Tapestry's "Urbanization" and LifeMode" segment groups compare to PRIZM's "Social" and "Lifestage" segment groups.

Suggestions:

• As you learned in Part II of your BAO orientation, "Market Profile" and "Executive Summary" are good places to start; they characterize your geography (and will quickly highlight the demography you investigated last week).
• You may have identified one purchasing/buying choice ("these people all drive SUV's") in your Claritas PRIZM segment which you questioned;t here may be a report in "Consumer Spending" or "Business" which further validates your position.
  • "Retail Goods and Services Expenditures" may provide insight, as might others.
  • The "Market Potential" reports show you likelihood of specific purchasing/spending behaviors in particular categories.
• As a comparison of your ZIP code's dominant Esri Tapestry segments with your ZIP code's dominant Claritas PRIZM;make sure you're comparing "top 5" to "top 5." Use these questions to help:
  1. How similar was/were the top segment(s) in the two systems? Consider the names of the segments and the demographic/psychographic attributes the systems claim for each.
  2. Was your ZIP code accurately portrayed in Tapestry?
  3. If you didn't feel that the top 5 Claritas/Tapestry segments matched you personally, was there a segment further down the list that did? What proportion of your ZIP code is "your" segment?
  4. If you looked at segments at the tract or block group level, were your results more accurate?

Because this is an optional activity, there is no deliverable for 4.3.