November 18, 2009 — GfK GeoMarketing has released the GfK Europe Map Edition 2009/2010, which includes thousands of new additions. With around 1,000 digital maps of 42 countries, the map edition forms the ideal basis for geomarketing, i.e., the analysis and visualization of company and market data on digital maps.
Over the past year, thousands of changes have occurred in Europe's administrative units, including municipal boundary and postcode reforms. Central and Eastern Europe have experienced an especially large number of changes, with reforms to multiple countries' administrative and postcode structures. For example, Lithuania experienced 1,370 name and boundary changes in addition to 400 completely new postcode areas. Poland also reformed its postcode structure, adding 49 new postcodes and eliminating 77. Italy also underwent significant change: 14 large cities that previously had a single postcode per city have now been subdivided into multiple postcodes, resulting in comprehensive changes to regional names and boundaries. The new Europe Map Edition reflects all of these regional reforms and changes. The 2009 update also includes the newly introduced two- and four-digit postcode areas in Albania.
"An immense amount of research and effort was required to carry out this comprehensive update, because every country has a different organizational structure," explains Klaus Dittmann, head of cartography at GfK GeoMarketing. "An up-to-date cartographic basis is essential for geomarketing, otherwise addresses of business locations and customers are not correctly associated with the maps. Consequently, GfK GeoMarketing updates its maps annually, Europe-wide. The new Europe Map Edition gives companies a reliable and up-to-date cartographic basis for all place-related planning activities in Europe. The maps also fit perfectly with the new GfK Purchasing Power Europe dataset."
Frequent refinements and additions to existing maps
The updated Europe Map Edition has been refined and includes new maps and details. Coastlines for all of Europe have been re-digitized and rendered in greater detail, comparable to a conventional map scale of 1:100,000 or better. The maps of Albania, Estonia, Hungary and Portugal have been completely re-digitized and now contain, among other features, significantly more detailed postcode maps and city layers. Comprehensive coverage of Europe, seamlessly fitting and overlap-free boundaries, national and local place-name attributions and infinite zoom capability are some of the features that characterize the new map edition.
Wide range of applications
Digital maps play an essential role in international expansion and sales territory planning, serving as an indispensable component of geomarketing software or geographic information systems (GIS). These software applications are used to analyze and display the geographic component of company and market data on digital maps.
Like all of the digital maps sold by GfK GeoMarketing, the new GfK Europe Map Edition is available in all standard digital map formats, including *.shp (ESRI), *.mid/*.mif (MapInfo), *.gdb (Geodatabase) and *.lay (GfK GeoMarketing). Maps in the RegioGraph *.lay format contain new background maps with comprehensively integrated Tele Atlas street maps. The inclusion of street map data makes it possible to analyze customers and regions down to the level of street segments using GfK GeoMarketing's sales territory planning software RegioGraph. The *.lay format of the Europe Map Edition is particularly indispensable for Europe-wide sales territory planning, because the integrated infrastructure data and background maps allow users to automatically take into account natural barriers such as rivers and mountains in addition to accessibility via the road network.
GfK GeoMarketing offers the new digital maps for 42 European countries as stand-alone country sets and as part of a Western Europe, Eastern Europe or comprehensive Europe package. Perfectly fitting, up-to-date GfK purchasing power data is also available for all of Europe. The maps in the Europe Map Edition are part of GfK GeoMarketing's cartographic coverage of 240 countries, the world's largest collection of digital administrative and postcode maps.
About GfK GeoMarketing
GfK GeoMarketing is one of the largest providers of geomarketing services in Europe for customers and users from all branches of trade. Key business areas include:
- Consultancy and reports Consultancy
- Market data Market data
- Digital maps Digital maps
- RegioGraph Geomarketing software RegioGraph
The company is a subsidiary of the globally active GfK Group. Ranked fourth among the world's market research institutes, the GfK is represented in 100 countries with over 150 subsidiaries and 10,000 employees.
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