How Big is a Market Area?

Abstract

N THIS brief paper it is not the intention to relate the history of the movement or the increased demand for Practical Marketing Areas. It is sufficient to state that during the past decade the need for economic, sales and advertising data set up in some form of practical marketing units has grown by leaps and bounds. Business today is forced to do some form of sales accounting and market planning. The growth of selective selling as a road to profits is one of the main results. The realization that certain markets, due to geographic, climatic or social differences, must have special advertising and sales treatment in order to return a profit, has emphasized the need for a more practical basis in grouping of townships, cities and counties into homogenous marketing areas. Political divisions of territory have, as a rule, proved entirely unsatisfactory in distribution work, As units they have failed to make even reasonably true statements of sales and advertising operation. In this day of good roads, automobiles, busses and rapid transportation at low cost, the city line has ceased to exist. City workers live in the surrounding country. Each day their working, buying and social habits have become intermixed. And they travel across city boundaries to earn, spend and enjoy to such an extent as to make recording impractical. In numerous localities county lines have been broken down by the same processes and they consequently offer very little improvement over cities as market units. In still other localities, where a county contains more than one market, the county as a unit is too large and there the township or small groups of townships become the more practical unit.