Geo Marketing : Relevance in today's world!

I have a problem. I want to create a furniture shop in Delhi. Delhi is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest metropolis by population in India. It has more than 12.25 million inhabitants and 15.9 million residents in the National Capital Region.

Where should I choose the location of my shop ? Which location will be least distance from the supplier's office ? Where could I get enough customers to buy furnitures from me ? Do they have the purchasing power to buy expensive furniture ? Are people willing to travel large distance for buying furniture ? Are the surrounding shops selling same stuff ? Will it be better if I plan my shop near newly constructed societies/homes ?

Answering these questions will involve lots of research work. Collection of customer related data involving demographic and socio-economic details is required. Maybe, it can involve going door-to-door to survey residents and hope they answer correctly. It will involve time and hence will be an expensive proposition. Suppose, I get the results with me. Now what ? I have the analysis in the tabular format. What if, I change it into visual expression. Yes, I create a digital map of Delhi and superimpose the customer data. I get the type of purchasing patterns, the region-wise distribution of customers over the map. Hence, I can easily make out the regions in Delhi where customers are spending most on furniture over the years. Of course, use of software and important details like location of customer drives the results. Over the digital map, I can approximate the street location which can be the most 'valueable' for me.

This was a case of application of Geo-Marketing to the catchment area identification, proper demographic analysis and socio-economic analysis. As a general term, Geomarketing is the integration of Geographical intelligence into all marketing aspects including sales and distribution. See telecom industry, where players are constantly reducing their margins to retain customers. How can they earn profits with decreasing ARPUs (Average Revenue per User)? Certainly, they bank on Value Added Services which can be different for each circles of their operations. Players present in the South, need to analyze customer data accordingly and relate to the local connect to increase belongingness. They can use Geo-marketing methods to filter their customers, create optimized promotional campaigns and save redundant costs.