Helping brands invest smarter: Location Intelligence for retail and FMCG consulting

Choosing locations has become increasingly complex — and so has consulting on them. It now requires a blend of location and decision intelligence, grounded in real-world context and capable of adapting to shifting economic and social dynamics. The question is: are your insights keeping pace with the places you’re advising on?

“Where will it work?” has long followed “What works?” in most business decisions.

However, answering both questions has become increasingly even more complex, especially as the digital era continues to evolve at the speed of light.

This ongoing transformation has also added a further question to the list:

“Do we really need a physical presence? And why?”

In 2025, when retail brands decide to establish a physical location, it’s a deliberate choice—no longer a necessity for most.

This means higher stakes and often justifying that presence to budget holders and decision-makers with clear, evidence-based reasoning.

Similarly, site selection for consumer goods, which inherently requires a physical location is becoming more complex to evaluate.

Their success is deeply tied to location, but that location is now shaped by rapidly evolving variables.

As social dynamics evolve and economic conditions shift, factors such as changing consumer behaviour, workforce mobility, urbanisation, and regulatory pressures are creating both new opportunities and fresh challenges for strategic investment.

It’s perhaps no wonder businesses are turning to consulting teams now more than ever. The global management consulting market is projected to reach approximately $897 billion by 2034, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.56% from 2025.

Consultants are brought in not only for strategic advice, but for data-backed validation that can withstand internal and external scrutiny.  And all of this means they’re navigating an increasingly multidimensional landscape—where traditional assumptions no longer hold, and every recommendation must account for a dynamic mix of spatial, social, and economic factors.

So, one thing is clear: understanding where still matters — but it requires more sophisticated tools.

Spatial data, once treated as a nice-to-have, is now the foundation for strategic consulting, especially in high-impact areas like investment and site selection.

In this blog we’ll cover:  

Existing data sources and their limitations

Consulting teams already work with a rich set of data: customer insights, transaction history, market reports, industry benchmarks, and financial forecasts. These tools are powerful — but they often operate in isolation from place.

When advising on physical investments the missing piece is often real-world context. Not just where something is, but what surrounds it, how people interact with the space, how perceptions shift over time, and what dynamics are in play on the ground.

Standard datasets can reveal market potential, but they rarely show whether a neighbourhood has the right mix of services, or how a location’s reputation, accessibility, or competitive density could influence performance.

And while some location-based data is sometimes already used, it’s often fragmented or static, limiting its value in fast-moving scenarios.

Ignoring these spatial nuances can expose investments to unnecessary risk — from overestimating demand to missing emerging competitors or shifts in consumer behaviour.

For consultants expected to bring forward-looking, evidence-based strategies to the table, these blind spots are increasingly hard to ignore — especially when clients expect advice that’s not just financially sound, but deeply local, responsive, and ready to scale.

Fortunately, integrating richer location intelligence doesn’t require discarding existing tools. It complements and enhances them, adding vital layers of spatial insight that bring decision-making closer to the reality on the ground.

Enhancing insights with location intelligence

Location intelligence significantly enriches traditional consulting datasets by integrating spatial context and real-time behavioural insights, allowing consulting teams to move beyond broad, often static analyses into a much more detailed understanding of markets and environments.

Unlike conventional data sources that might focus solely on demographics, sales figures, or transaction histories, location intelligence offers granular, place-based insights that reveal how and why certain phenomena occur in specific locations.

By enriching your existing data with Points of Interest (POI) data — with attributes such as business category, price range, opening hours, and customer sentiment — consultants gain a multifaceted view of local ecosystems.

This data paints a more accurate picture of the competitive landscape, consumer preferences, and operational nuances.

For example, sentiment data (such as our Sentiment Score) aggregated by category or customer language provide an understanding of public perception and reputation, while footfall proxies and popularity indices (such as our Popularity Index) offer indicators of physical traffic and engagement levels.

These insights allow consultants to detect emerging trends, spot underserved or oversaturated markets, and evaluate the overall vitality of a location beyond just raw financial metrics.

Additionally, digital trace summarisation — including online reviews and social media signals — adds a layer of temporal dynamics, showing how perceptions and behaviours evolve over time. This temporal component enables forward-looking scenario planning and risk assessment, crucial for long-term strategic decisions such as site selection, market entry, or expansion.

Location intelligence also supports the integration of external factors such as urban development patterns, transportation accessibility, and regulatory environments, helping consultants to anticipate shifts that may affect the sustainability of investments.

By incorporating these rich spatial datasets into their analysis, consulting teams can deliver recommendations that are not only financially sound but also operationally viable and highly contextualised.

This means strategies that are better tailored to local realities, more responsive to change, and ultimately more likely to drive sustainable success.

7 Practical applications of Location Intelligence in consulting projects

Location intelligence data doesn’t just complement consulting engagements for retail and consumer goods brands—it strategically enables them.

By grounding recommendations in place-specific insights, consultants can sharpen strategies, reduce risks, and add measurable value to client decisions.

Here are seven key areas where location data is actively shaping project outcomes:

1. Site selection and network optimisation

Choosing the right store or distribution centre location is crucial for retail and CG brands. Location intelligence helps consultants evaluate foot traffic patterns, competitor density, and local demographics to pinpoint sites that maximise reach and profitability while minimising cannibalisation and overlap.

2. Consumer behaviour and segmentation

Understanding who the customers are, where they live, and how they interact with physical spaces enables more effective targeting. Location data enriches traditional segmentation by adding spatial context, allowing brands to tailor product assortments and marketing messages to local preferences and trends.

3. Competitive landscape analysis

Consultants use spatial data to map competitors’ presence and performance, revealing market gaps and saturation points. This helps retail and CG brands identify underserved areas or adjust strategies to better compete in crowded markets.

4. Store performance monitoring

Integrating location intelligence with sales data and footfall proxies allows consultants to assess how store location and surrounding factors impact performance. This insight supports decisions on store openings, closures, or reformatting.

5. Market entry and expansion planning

When brands plan to enter new regions or countries, location intelligence identifies promising markets by analysing population density, income levels, and competitor presence. This ensures expansion efforts are focused where potential returns are highest.

6. Promotional campaign targeting and effectiveness measurement

Location data supports hyper-local marketing efforts by pinpointing where target customers live and shop. Consultants can help brands design and measure the success of localised promotions such as out-of-home (OOH) advertising, improving marketing ROI through more precise targeting.

7. Supply chain and logistics optimisation

Spatial insights enable consultants to recommend optimal distribution routes, warehouse locations, and inventory strategies that reduce costs and improve delivery times—crucial for fast-moving consumer goods where timing and availability are vital.

Where location data fits into the consulting process

Guidance on when and how location data can be incorporated efficiently into different stages of consulting engagements, such as:

1. Opportunity assessment and early-stage scoping

In the earliest phase of a project, consultants are often tasked with identifying market gaps, assessing investment viability, or prioritising regions. Here, POI datasets — enriched with sentiment, popularity trends, and service density — offer a real-world, ground-level perspective to support hypotheses and calibrate assumptions

2. Strategic modelling and scenario planning

When building business cases, forecasting performance, or modelling expansion strategies, consultants can integrate spatial KPIs (e.g. footfall proxies, reputation scores, saturation) to simulate outcomes more accurately. This allows for more grounded recommendations, especially in sectors where location is tightly linked to success — such as retail, hospitality, or real estate.

3. Validation and stakeholder alignment

Clients expect evidence. Visualising POI data within interactive maps or dashboards can help bring strategic narratives to life, building credibility with stakeholders. Layering in location intelligence provides not only the “what” and “where” — but the “why now” — helping justify investment decisions in a way that feels tangible and timely.

4. Post-deployment monitoring and refinement

Spatial data isn’t just for upfront decisions. After implementation, consultants can continue to monitor sentiment trends, performance shifts, and changes in surrounding context — refining strategies as markets evolve. This adds long-term value to advisory relationships, and helps teams stay ahead of localised changes.

Ultimately, location data shouldn’t disrupt established workflows — it should strengthen them. Integrated thoughtfully, it becomes a silent differentiator: making strategic recommendations sharper, faster, and harder to ignore.

Complement your existing tools with contextual clarity with Data Appeal

Our scalable suite of geospatial and sentiment-enriched datasets designed to integrate directly into consulting workflows. These include:

• Core POI data: Business name, address, coordinates, industry and category — across any geography.

• Rich POI data: Sentiment scores, popularity index (a proxy for footfall), price range, and trending discussion topics.

• Add-ons: Everything from digital trace summaries and brand insights to trend data, facility details, guest origin analysis and more — all tailored for use cases like retail site selection, real estate investment, service network optimisation, or tourism development.

Rather than working in isolation, this data plugs into your existing frameworks — enhancing location-based segmentation, improving market sizing, and uncovering opportunities that might not be visible in standard datasets.

Back your consulting services with data that’s not just spatially aware, but also socially informed, and ready to scale. Our datasets are accessible via API, data packs, or through our visualisation platform, D / AI Locations, enabling flexible integration to suit your project needs.

Location Intelligence at work: Success stories across industries 

1. Site Selection: Discovering prime advertising locations

A global market research leader enhanced their out-of-home (OOH) advertising strategies by integrating location intelligence. By analysing traffic patterns, pedestrian flows, and peak hours, they identified optimal advertising spots, leading to more effective placements and improved ROI for their clients. 

2. Market intelligence: Targeting the right audience

Following a strategic acquisition, a leading soft drink producer aimed to expand its presence in Eastern Europe. With Data Appeal’s geospatial data enriched with sentiment analysis and popularity metrics, they assessed potential site locations and gauged online conversations, enabling data-driven decisions for market expansion and brand positioning. 

3. Data enrichment: Enhancing CRM with consumer insights

Poste Italiane, Italy’s national postal service, sought to enrich its CRM by incorporating external data. Collaborating with Data Appeal, they integrated sentiment analysis and reputation data from social networks, providing a comprehensive view of operators and eCommerce merchants, thereby refining their commercial strategies. 

4. Distributor selection: Optimising supply chain decisions

An international spirits brand aimed to expand its distribution network across the Mediterranean. By leveraging Data Appeal’s precise Points of Interest (POI) data, enriched with sentiment and popularity scores, they identified high-potential distributors and optimal locations, streamlining their supply chain and enhancing market penetration. 

Explore some of our success stories here