Editor’s Note: Insights That Work is a showcase of how the GRIT Top 50 Most Innovative Suppliers create solutions to some of the biggest challenges in insights today. This year’s edition provides case studies on brands like Nestle, Shell, Frito-Lay, and more.
Challenge
Attracting luxury brands to a mall can be tough at the best of times. Convincing them to commit to a multi-use development project away from any major urban center and before the development broke ground is almost unheard of in today’s market. That was the challenge facing J. Richard Hill & Co. The real estate consultancy was responsible for identifying potential retail tenants for the Wai Kai Commercial Development and their 235,000 square foot mixed-use development in West Oahu, Hawaii. To attract prospective tenants, J. Richard Hill & Co. needed to understand the consumers who lived near the development and whether they shopped at the upscale retailers being targeted.
Solution
The West Oahu trade area was divided into 14 sectors, which were determined by neighborhood types, drive times and natural barriers. Once these sectors were identified, Environics Analytics used PRIZM Premier to determine the dominant consumer household segments for each area. These segments were used to create custom target groups that described households by life stage and lifestyle, as well as other consumer buying and behavioral characteristics.
J. Richard Hill & Co. identified nine target retailers it thought would be a good fit for the mixed-use development. To confirm the company’s hypothesis, Environics Analytics geofenced standalone stores for each of the nine target retailers on the mainland and used mobile data to understand the visitors going to those locations. These mobile data were linked with PRIZM to profile and segment the shoppers visiting each brand to identify the target market for the Wai Kai development.
After identifying the core consumer segments for each of the nine retailers, Environics Analytics used mobile analytics to determine if those same consumer segments were present in high concentrations in and around the planned Wai Kai development. The core consumer segments for each of the targeted retailers were located by ZIP code and U.S. census block group in West Oahu. Environics Analytics mapped these segments and validated the market opportunity using the Retail Market Power database to assess the retail climate and demand for luxury goods in West Oahu.
Outcome
The analysis by Environics Analytics showed that the high net worth and aspirational households in the Wai Kai area were more than three times as likely to shop at the luxury brands that J. Richard Hill & Co. identified as potential tenants.
In total, there were more than 100,000 households in West Oahu that were likely shoppers of luxury goods. The project also revealed some surprises that further bolstered the case for these retailers to locate in Wai Kai. While households with incomes less than $65,000 would not be considered the typical luxury shopper, mobile data revealed that these households were more likely to shop certain luxury brands than the average household. Based on the analysis, the area offered an optimal mix of households to support the luxury retailers sought by J. Richard Hill & Co. for the Wai Kai development.