How Region and Ethnicity Impact America’s Fast Food Preferences

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Northeast vs. West Coast, South vs. Midwest, America proved that quick service restaurants are among its most favored businesses.

 

In our recent report, Dining Out in America: The Quick Service Restaurant Landscape, we took a look at the most popular fast food brands in the nation, including a deep dive into the differences in dining preferences by region and demographic segments.

 

Regionally, consumers in the West and Northeast share a love for quick food and quick coffee. In each region, McDonald’s was #1, Subway #3, and Burger King #4. What was #2 for each? The rival coffee giants – Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. It appears that America does run on Dunkin’, but only in the Northeast.  In the West, as well as South and Midwest, Starbucks stole the coffee show.

 

The coffee giants’ coastal dominance is likely impacted by their geographical starts, Dunkin’ Donuts (Massachusetts), Starbucks (Seattle), while Starbucks’ aggressive expansion strategy has positioned it among the top 10 most-visited places in each region.  With Starbucks poised to add 1,500 additional U.S. locations in the next five years it will be interesting to see if Dunkin’ Donuts will maintain its top coffee position in the Northeast.

 

 

When we shifted the lens from region-by-region analysis to focus on the role of ethnicity in dining preferences, we discovered a number of interesting insights. For instance, Asian Americans are nearly 4X more likely to visit Jamba Juice and over 1.5X  more likely to visit Starbucks than the average American.  On the flip side, they are also less likely to visit the Big 4 (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Taco Bell) than the average American. In the case of Wendy’s specifically, Asian Americans are 46% less likely to stop in for a meal. This should sound an alarm for Wendy’s as well as highlight the potential for reaching this largely untapped segment.

 

 

To see more trends in the fast food  landscape, check out our full report: Dining Out in America.

America’s Top 10 Burger Restaurants

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In honor of National Burger Month, we took a look at the top burger destinations in America based on data from our newest service, Placed Insights.

 

One of the most surprising burger facts we discovered was that nearly half of Americans visited McDonald’s at least once in March, making it not only the most-visited burger destination but also the most-visited business in the U.S. Burger King took the #2 spot in the burger ranking with 24% of Americans visiting during the month. Wendy’s came in just behind The King at 23% to round out the top three before the competition fell off to 10% reach or less. With so many consumers frequenting fast-food burger joints, and McDonald’s in particular, we know that it’s safe to conclude that America is in fact “lovin’ it”.

 

Top 10 Burger Restaurants by number of Visits

 

Another interesting finding is the correlation between age and type of burger establishment visited. For instance, In-N-Out, Jack In The Box, and Five Guys all proved to be more likely candidates for 18-24 year olds to satiate their burger craving than the average American. But when we switch our focus to older Americans, we find that chains such as Culver’s, Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr. and Steak’ n Shake see those age 45 and older more likely to place an order there than an average consumer.

 

 

Armed with all this burger knowledge, where will you be celebrating National Burger Month? Let us know on Twitter @Placed.

 

For more market trends, be sure to check out our latest report: State of Place Q1 2013.

A New Way to Monetize Your App (without Ads)

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How to monetize apps?  The challenge plagues many developers as they try to strike a balance between making money without compromising the user experience. With monetization options largely limited to paid app models, in-app purchasing, and ads (which impact user experience), it’s clear that developers need new ways to drive app dollars while keeping their experience intact.

 

Answering this need for more monetization options, Placed announced the launch of Placed Affiliate earlier this week, which offers app developers a new and easy way to monetize apps without altering the user experience.

 

If you’re interested in monetizing your app with Placed Affiliate, request an invitation to participate here.

Placed Affiliate provides incremental and recurring revenue to app developers by monetizing location data for market research, not ads, and works alongside existing monetization channels to increase total app revenue.

 

Set up is easy: Developers implement the SDK, users opt-in and, in exchange, the developer earns incremental income.

Placed Affiliate

 

What about privacy? Placed keeps user privacy at the core of its approach. Participating apps not only have location permissions enabled by the end user, but also require a secondary notification and opt-in for any data exchange, ensuring a privacy first user experience.

 

Ready to monetize your app? Request your invitation to participate in Placed Affiliate.

 

 

 

Do You Showroom? Study Reveals New Insights into Showroomers’ Shopping Habits

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Showrooming: The word that strikes fear into the hearts of brick-and-mortar retailers as shoppers take to their aisles only to buy for a cheaper price online. In our new study, Placed: Aisle to Amazon, we take an in-depth look at where these showroom-savvy consumers shop, revealing which retailers should be most wary of this growing trend.

 

Males vs. Female Showroomers

One of the key findings from the study highlighted the differences between male and female showroomers and the brick-and-mortar stores they were likely to visit.

 

  • Best Buy took the top spot for males who were 39% more likely to visit the electronics store than the average U.S. consumer, while Kohl’s led for Females at 49%.
  • For Male showroomers, the #2 and #3 retailers they were most likely to visit were held by home improvement retailers The Home Depot (24%) and Lowe’s (23%), with Sears landing the #4 spot at 22% and Costco securing the #5 position at 20%.
  • Females saw PetSmart (47%), Bed Bath & Beyond (46%), Marshall’s (44%) and Old Navy (38%) round out the top five.

Download your copy of the full study: Placed: Aisle to Amazon

Male vs. Female Showroomers

 

 

 

5 Things You Need to Know About Location Measurement

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Location measurement is more than just knowing a latitude and longitude point. In fact, assigning the closest place to a latitude and longitude point results in an incorrect match of place to a user’s location in more than 90 percent of cases – just one of the findings revealed in our latest white paper, Measuring Offline Consumer Behavior: Understanding the Foundation of Location Measurement and Analytics.

 

This report takes a look at the science, challenges and opportunities behind location analytics and what this emerging field means for companies seeking customer insights and competitive intelligence from location data. Here’s a look at five key takeaways from the report:

 

  • Location + Place = Foundation of Analytics: Location measurement involves two equally important and complex components: location data collection and accurate place assignment.
  • “Smart” Data Collection: Cell tower signal, Wi-Fi and GPS are the primary methods of collecting location data via smartphones. GPS provides the most accurate location measurement with an average accuracy range of 5 to 30 meters. Sensor data, such as a smartphone’s accelerometer, compass and gyroscope, are another important set of factors used to determine a user’s movement in the physical world.
  • Optimized for Battery Life: Although GPS provides the most accurate location data, it is the most battery intensive and thus has the most potential to negatively affect user experience. Placed has devised intelligent algorithms optimized for battery life, utilizing sensor requests to determine the best time to collect high-quality data. In an experiment, using optimized algorithms resulted in battery drain of 2% per hour compared to 11% drain when not optimized.
  • Meta Makes the Model: Place databases are noisy and studies have shown this noise makes a significant impact on accuracy. In 9 of 10 cases, assigning the closest place to a latitude and longitude point results is the wrong match of place to a user’s actual location when depending solely on database information. The Placed inference model leverages metadata, such as time, demographic affinity, business popularity, name normalization and business category, to significantly improve assignment accuracy and yield more actionable analytics for clients.
  • Privacy Focused, Privacy Forward: Best practices for location data collection are transparent and keep consumers’ privacy at the core of their methodology.  Placed has pioneered an explicit, triple opt-in approach to location measurement that beats industry standards.

To read the full report, please visit: Measuring Offline Consumer Behavior: Understanding the Foundation of Location Measurement and Analytics.

Who’s Keeping their New Year’s Resolutions? The Truth Told by Location Data

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The transition into the New Year sees some of the most significant shifts in consumer behavior. It’s the end of the holiday season and the beginning of a new year, which often means making resolutions to improve and change our lives. But just how much does the change in year actually change consumers’ physical-world behaviors? We analyzed Placed location data to find out how the New Year is impacting where people go. The results we uncovered might surprise you.

 

By aggregating and normalizing data collected from Placed Panels, we were able to determine the places people were more and less likely to visit based on the category’s share of place.  Category share of place is defined as the proportion of visits to a place during January 1 – 14, 2013 compared to the proportion of visits in December 2012.

 

Here’s a look at the results:

 

  • In January, Religious Centers captured 70% more share of place compared to December, which one could hypothesize is influenced by people resolving to be more active in their religious communities in 2013.
  • The quintessential resolution to get fit caused Gyms & Fitness Centers to increase their share of place by 23% in the first two weeks of January.
    • The YMCA, Planet Fitness and Gold’s Gym saw the largest relative gains in visits during the start of the New Year.
  • Not only were people resolving to take better care of themselves in the New Year, but they were also more likely to take care of their vehicles. Share of visits to retailers specializing in automotive (excluding dealers) increased by 14% in the New Year.
  • Surprisingly, Restaurants, including Fast Food, accounted for a slightly higher share of place in January as diet resolutions seemed to do little in affecting restaurant behavior.
  • Some of steepest drops in share of place among Shopping categories included:
    • Supermarkets & Groceries:  -8%
    • Computers and Electronics:  -14%
    • Discount & Wholesale Stores: -24%
    • Department Stores: -30%
    • Clothing and Accessories:  -43%
  • Perhaps as a result of too many holiday parties and more health-conscious resolutions, the Arts, Entertainment and Nightlife category, which includes visits to bars, clubs, etc., decreased its share of place by 26% in January.

Location Data New Year's Resolutions

 

This rich location information into consumers’ actual physical-world behavior gives companies new competitive intelligence to gauge performance against their entire industry and specific competitors. For instance, Kroger could determine if a decline in store traffic in January is an industry trend or isolated to their stores. Knowing this can fundamentally change their approach to driving store traffic and increasing sales.

 

Further, understanding the ebbs and flows of consumer behavior creates actionable insights for retailers. The 14% uptick in activity to automotive stores (non-dealers) identifies an opportunity for retailers such as Walmart, Costco, and Sears to capture share of place by strategically running promotions for their auto services and supplies.

 

Placed is changing the way location data is understood by providing transparency into the migratory patterns of consumers. With this intelligence, companies can better understand trends within their industries, gauge performance against specific competitors and look for new opportunities to leverage shifts in consumer behavior to drive people into stores and through the checkout lines – helping marketers uncover new sources of revenue in the New Year.

How Location Analytics Can Help Increase Mobile CPMs

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Adweek’s recent article, Mo’ Traffic but No Mobile Money, took a look at the mobile CPM challenge plaguing publishers. Even with mobile traffic skyrocketing and smartphone adoption continuing its steady climb, mobile ads still struggle with low engagement, less sophisticated advertising technology and limited screen space, keeping mobile ad prices well below those of their desktop counterparts.

 

Perhaps the biggest hurdle for publishers though is the lack of metrics currently available to make the case for greater mobile CPMs. As the Adweek article states, “For publishers to justify more mobile investment, the industry needs better metrics, most argued.”

 

While on-device metrics are important in moving mobile CPMs higher, many publishers often overlook the value of location context that is inherent and unique to the mobile platform. Try to remember the last time you saw someone pull out their laptop while shopping, now try to remember the last time you DIDN’T see someone browsing on their phone in the same store – get the point?

 

Answering the where in the mobile audience equation has the potential to unlock a wealth of consumer insights to help build the case for greater mobile ad rates. The ability to know and quantify the stores, restaurants, businesses and categories that mobile users are nearby when engaging with publisher content creates a whole new layer of context (and value) for advertisers looking to bridge the gap between the offline and online experience.

 

In a recent case study, we highlighted how one news publisher was able to increase mobile CPM rates using Placed Analytics location data. Here’s a brief recap of the strategies they used to achieve better mobile ad rates:

 

Increase Mobile CPMs with Placed Analytics

  • Identify new categories to prospect:
    The publisher saw that 36% of usage occurred nearby restaurants. However, restaurants made up less than 10% of total ad sales. Using this data point, the sales team was able to identify restaurants as a top prospecting category and use location data to back up their pitches.
  • Optimize ad delivery by day and time:
    The publisher discovered that their users were most often nearby department stores on weekday evenings and weekend afternoons, so they decided to optimize the delivery of retail ads to reach visitors during the times and days when they were most likely shopping.
  • Selling to new advertisers:
    The sales team was able to use location data to secure a new supermarket advertiser. Being able to show that 10% of mobile usage occurred nearby that supermarket’s stores, as well as how much activity occurred near competitors’ stores, and which markets had the most competitive behavior helped justify higher rates for access to its more qualified audience.

As 2013 gets underway, improving mobile monetization is set to be a key theme for publishers and advertisers this year as both seek ways to leverage the small screen for big advertising gains.

 

If you’re interested in location data for your app or mobile site, sign up here to get started with Placed Analytics for free.

Holiday Retail Analysis 2012: Visits, Market Share, Days

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Just like a big family dinner over the holidays, retailers bring with them their own unique personalities to the holiday shopping season based on findings from Placed’s 2012 Holiday Retail Analysis.

 

By aggregating and then normalizing data collected from Placed Panels, Placed is able to provide retailer-level insights on visits to physical locations.  This micro-level data is a first in an industry previously dominated by aggregate insights with limited actionability (ex. retail sales up 2% year over year).

 

Top December Shopping Days by Retailer Based on In-Store Visits
Each individual retailer has its own persona when it comes to in-store visits.  Toys ‘R’ Us’ busiest day in December was the 15th, while Best Buy was Super Saturday (22nd), and Walmart was the 23rd.  This highlights that a single day does not make or break a retailer’s holiday season.

 

Busiest Holiday Shopping Days by Retailer

Top Gainers by Key Shopping Days
Consumers’ retail preferences change based on time to Christmas.  Gainers in terms of relative in-store visits were incredibly diverse across a week in December (Super Saturday, Christmas Eve, and Day After Christmas).  Only American Eagle and Victoria’s Secret made the top five in these three days, while the rest of the retailers were unique.  American Eagle was also the highest ranked retailer for Black Friday.

Top Gaining Retailers by Holiday Shopping Day

Wireless Carrier Retail Market Share
With the carrier retail outlets, market share is always in flux where a few percentage points mean the difference between #1 and #2 in the market, or #3 and #4. This level of fluctuation highlights that there are opportunities to increase share in the market as well as identifying strong and weak players.

Wireless Carrier Store Market Share

Big Box Retailer Market Share

Big Box Retailer Market Share

Department Store Market Share

Department Store Market Share

 

 

 

 

Just in Time for the Holidays, Placed Launches Give 2 Charity App

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The holiday season is a time for giving. But finding the time and money to donate is often a difficult task.

 

Today, Placed launched a new app called Give 2 Charity that makes donating to charities easy and accessible to anyone with a smartphone. The free app lets users earn points toward monetary donations to several leading charities in exchange for opting in to location measurement.

Donate to Charities

 

Here’s a look at some of our favorite charities users will have a chance to donate to: Make-A-Wish Foundation, American Cancer Society, American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, Action Against Hunger, Sierra Club and the Humane Society. People who download the Give 2 Charity app can be assured that 100% of the proceeds are donated directly to the charity they select.

 

 

Charitable contributions are made possible by users agreeing to location measurement through the Give 2 Charity app.  Measured locations are aggregated across thousands of users to provide meaningful analytics to third parties.  Location data is always aggregated, never shared on an individual basis, and not used for ad targeting.  Donors may opt out of giving at any time simply by uninstalling the application.

 

Donate with Your Phone

 

We hope you will download the Give 2 Charity app and join us in giving back this holiday season and all year long! Give 2 Charity is available today on Android and coming soon for iPhone. Download the Android app or sign up for first access to the iPhone app here.

 

Don’t forget to stay connected. Like Give 2 Charity on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Cutting through the Noise in Location Measurement

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In a recent conversation with ClickZ, Placed founder and CEO David Shim discussed the latest developments in the burgeoning location measurement industry. Gaining true value from location data starts with accurate location measurement. But how do we cut through the noise in location data to find the correct insights that help drive marketing strategies? David discusses this issue in the ClickZ article, The Evolving Location Measurement Industry. Below is an excerpt from the post:

 

In early experiments we found that 90 percent+ of the time assigning the closest place to a latitude and longitude resulted in an incorrect match. This level of noise impacts a marketer’s ability to effectively leverage location insights into mobile ad targeting decisions. On the flip side for a publisher the ability to target based on a mobile device’s location is generally limited to 100 meters, the length of a football field.

 

To more accurately determine location, Placed looks at a series of features that include latitude and longitudes, location source, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, etc. By treating location as more than a single value, we are able to cluster sets of data points to infer a more accurate location. This location is then contextualized to a set of nearby places, which are determined by a set of features including proximity, popularity, and category.

 

Check out the full article to read more on the changing landscape of location measurement.