Market Areas: Determining the Impacts of Different Delineation Methods

Value: 15%; graded through a rubric
Style: Formal Report (maximum of 1000 words + figures and tables)
In this assignment, you will look at different methods to delineate market areas for a chain of stores
(Home Depot) and identify the differences in their estimates of the customer base. In doing so, you will
also make a determination of which method is most suitable. This determination can be made off of any
number of factors, including ease of delineating the market areas, the results of the analysis, issues with
the method, or any other pro/con you have identified. However, a key part of this assignment is actually
conducting analysis to be presented as you investigate this problem. But don’t worry – all of the steps
that you will have to do will have been covered in the workshops!
What you will be doing:
– Using the Home Depot store location data, you need to delineate market areas for each store
three ways: through buffers (where you will have to decide and justify two sizes of buffer); and
through Thiessen polygons.
– Using census tract data, you will need to calculate the number of people in each store’s market
area. It is up to you to determine how best to present this information (i.e. averages,
differences, values for individual stores; in-text or in a table).
– You will need to make one or more maps to show the market areas you created and then use
these as evidence to qualitatively judge the market areas that were created (i.e. for overlap,
completeness, or any other factor you may notice).
The data that you will be provided:
– Point shapefile data (vector) for the locations of Home Depot locations in the GTA
– Polygon shapefile data (vector) of population data based on census tracts in the GTA
The methods that you will be using in this assignment:
– Buffers (from Workshop 2)
– Thiessen Polygons (from Workshop 3)
– Spatial Joins (from Workshop 3)
– Symbology and proper map making (from Workshop 1)
The style that you will be communicating your findings and conclusions is a formal report. This means
that there are several sections that will be required to get full marks: an Introduction that introduces
the problem and presents a specific research question or purpose that you will then evaluate in the
remainder of the paper; a Methods section that briefly outlines what you did; a Results section that
presents the outcome of your analysis; and a Discussion and Conclusion section where you formally give
your opinion to evaluate the research question you presented in the introduction. For this paper, you do
not need a literature review section. References can and should be used as needed – in the format that
you chose as long as you are consistent.