A Technique for Spotting Retail Outlets

Abstract

T'JHE diagram-map illustrated opposite represents an attempt on the part of the Maryland Pharmaceutical Company to develop a technique for presenting results of certain sales promotions. As the illustration shows, it attempts to be not only graphic, but geographic as well. Conventional spot-mapping did not serve our purpose. To put a pin in the map for every store that participated in a sales promotion would show chiefly that there are more drug stores in Baltimore than in Annapolis. But it would tell nothing of the sales performance of each market measured by its potential. On the other hand, a mere area graph (such as a bar graph or pie chart) of every market with its relative potential would not bring out geographic relationships which are important for our purposes. The present technique attempts to show both positional relationships and an area or size factor. The area assigned to each city or town is determined by the number of retail drug outlets therein (taken from a trade directory), one square of the graph paper being used to designate each store. Thus, town number I4 has 6 drug stores, while near it town 30 has 2 stores. (The numbers refer to the alphabetical order in the directory to facilitate referring back to the name of the town.) The towns are placed as near to their actual locations on the map as this technique permits. Obviously, some distortion takes place as a result of the two-way scale (one scale between towns and another within the towns). The distortion reflects the very reason why we need this method: that accurate