New Data and Analytics Capture Consumer Travel Patterns— Any Time, Any Day, Any Where

Toronto, April 27, 2017 — Environics Analytics (EA) today announced a new offering in its products and services portfolio: mobile analytics services, with capabilities designed especially to support marketing and real estate decision making. Combining best practices in processing spatial data with privacy-friendly demographic, lifestyle and consumer behaviour, EA’s mobile analytics allows a variety of organizations—including shopping centre developers, retailers and financial institutions—to identify who’s visiting their locations, where they’re coming from, how long they stay and how often they return.

By quantifying how their trade areas and visitor profiles shift by time of day and day of week, organizations can better align their products, marketing and staffing by location. Insights from mobile analytics can help users with a wide range of applications—from developing a stronger understanding of their visitor profile by time of day to aligning products and staffing based on the local market and visitor traffic.

The data, anonymized and permission based, is drawn from location-enabled mobile devices like smartphones and in-car navigation systems. EA partnered with several industry leaders to develop two sets of mobile analytics data, and is working with BI Spatial to compile and process data every day from millions of devices—7 million in Canada and 100 million in the U.S.—for tracking foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores.  Other navigation data from vehicles are being updated quarterly to provide movement insights pertaining to road use and traffic patterns.

EA then analyses and integrates the data in the context of demographic, lifestyle, social values and spending information from its PRIZM5 segmentation system, giving users fuller profiles of consumers in any trade area or location. The data can be imported into EA’s business intelligence platform ENVISION to further analyze trade areas, visitor traffic patterns, brand competition and network cannibalization. And the data can be further leveraged to understand visitor shopping behaviour, media preferences and mindset—all of which can help in customizing communications as well as product and service offerings.

“Mobile analytics can provide answers to many business questions with a relatively small investment, and the insights it provides regarding time of day and day of week trade areas make it a game changer,” says Michele Sexsmith, EA’s senior vice president and practice leader for the media, retail, real estate and entertainment industries. “We enrich the travel pattern data by overlaying it with our rich lifestyle, media and behavioural data from PRIZM5. There are so many ways that a retailer can use mobile analytics to improve each customer’s experience.”

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About Environics Analytics

One of North America’s premier marketing and analytical services companies, Environics Analytics helps customers turn data and analytics into insight, strategy and results. Established in 2003, EA offers the full range of analytical services—from data supplier to strategic consultancy—and provides authoritative reports, software and modelling approaches to solve business challenges. Its team of 170 marketers, modellers and geographers help organizations identify their business problems, develop data-driven solutions and achieve success along every phase of their analytics journey. EA is a member of the Environics group, a unique alliance of companies dedicated to providing intelligent research, analytics and communications. To learn more, please visit environicsanalytics.com.