There is a new supermarket in Cologne-Braunsfeld - in the west of the metropolis. Not for everyone, but at least for up to 3,000 customers who apply in advance and are selected. The store is called Go2market and is a test market for consumer and market research for the launch of new products.
With the help of a lot of technology - including artificial intelligence, of course - the analysis options are as sophisticated as today's online stores. If it were a normal supermarket, how would the environment be described ?
Go2market: Members only
The so-called member customers of Go2market, named after the eponymous company Go2market GmbH from Vienna, are intended to represent a representative cross-section of the population, as reported by WDR. The product selection is focused, with around 350 products from 120 manufacturers being offered to the test audience. At the heart of the project is, of course, the question of what goes down well with customers and which target groups can be derived from the analyses. Numerous cameras and sensors record shopping activity, similar to the Amazon Go stores in the USA, which operate without cash registers.
You have to apply for the role of product tester at Go2market and if you are accepted, you play an active role in the launch of new products: Top or flop. According to the company, socio-demographic characteristics play a major role in the selection of members. The city of Haßloch in Rhineland-Palatinate plays a similar role and is also used as a test market as it is a completely average city in Germany.
The first store of its kind in Germany opened in Cologne, and there are already locations in Vienna. And the majority of members certainly do not come directly from the Braunsfeld district, but from a larger catchment area.
Analysis of target groups
Once individual products have passed the consumer test and target groups have been identified, they must be placed at the right point of sale - e.g. supermarkets - throughout Germany.
Let's imagine a new non-alcoholic trend drink for young adults. With our Nexiga Market Analyst online, you can quickly and easily define a catchment area for a location and determine potential based on market data. It is also ideal for evaluating sales opportunities for individual products.
The addresses of potential locations can be geocoded directly. In a further step, the potential in a defined catchment area is determined. By specifying the parameters for the catchment area (one or more distance zones) and selecting relevant characteristics (market data), which are available for different geographical levels and are evaluated for each distance zone, important key figures are obtained for evaluating sales opportunities.
If we consider the Go2market in Cologne-Braunsfeld - on the busy Aachener Straße - as a normal supermarket, it has around 18,200 inhabitants (in around 11,200 households) in its immediate vicinity (1 kilometer), almost 2,000 of whom are young people aged between 15 and 24. With an index value of 120.54, the average purchasing power is around 20% above the national average (all data determined on the basis of Nexiga's fine-grained residential districts ). Almost 49,000 inhabitants can be reached within a 2-kilometer radius. The target group of 15 to 24-year-olds for the potential trend drink would comprise more than 5,200 people.
Incidentally, you can carry out this application example free of charge - and without registration - using the freely accessible demo version of Marktanalyst online for Cologne. All further information on the online tool for location evaluation can be found here.