Geomarketing is the answer to questions such as: Why in a certain area of a city does the corporate Wal-Mart decide to put an Aurrera supermarket instead of a Sam's Club? o Why are some Nike sneakers that we buy in Mexico made in Indonesia with materials from Honduras? Geomarketing is more than the result of globalization, it is rather a discipline that focuses on generating competitive strategies based on the characteristics of society and its relationship with the geography where it is located.
Geomarketing has arisen thanks to the understanding that marketing and the economy in general cannot be excluded from geography, some characteristics of consumer behavior are closely related to where they live, their climate, location and their culture. Pierre George (1984) affirms that the current characteristics in the processes of production, transformation, circulation and consumption of merchandise are the result of the combination of geographical conditions and the actions of society throughout history.¹
Although research and study in the area of Geomarketing has been carried out mainly in the last 20 years, there are companies that have applied similar strategies long before this period, an example is the Swiss company Nestlé, which in 1920 had with production plants in Brazil, Australia, the United States and also exported to Hong Kong. Nestlé can currently dominate markets based on basic strategies, including decentralizing and adapting to local tastes.
Geomarketing uses statistical and cartographic tools to better express the geographic and demographic characteristics of certain cities or areas, the main information that we can obtain from these tools are: environment, socio-economic level, trade balance, energy consumption, telecommunications, languages, religions and transportation, just to name a few. This type of information is often provided free of charge by governments and is collected with the help of population censuses, state-of-the-art technology such as GPS and satellite images.
These types of Geomarketing tools have lately been used in very important areas such as advertising and a clear example is the case of Google Earth, a search engine for businesses and places of interest that allows you to travel around the world combining satellite photographs, maps, images in 3D and lots of information about each place.
Advertising needs Geomarketing to be effective, and not make mistakes that will later be regretted, Cateora and Graham (2001) believe that different societies most likely seek the same values or benefits of the primary function of a given article, but there are other psychological characteristics of the product that may be very different.² Levi's took this advice and created advertisements appropriate to the cultural characteristics of the countries that represented the greatest challenge for the company, one of them was Brazil, which is influenced by European fashion. and therefore they included images of Paris, in the case of England it was highlighted that the brand is a legendary product in the United States and American celebrities were included.
Another example of the application in advertising is the rental of spaces in the spectacular, most companies with this service offer the customer statistical, geographic and behavioral information about the areas where the spectacular are.
Commercial distribution has been one of the bases for a local company to grow into a national company. The necessary investment in the supply chain and in the production system must be governed by continuous improvement and innovation, so that the expansion costs are not very high and the benefits are maintained in the long term.
In the 70's, the Coors brewery located in Denver, Colorado faced a commercial distribution problem, in the United States it could not cover different states far from the center of the country because its unpasteurized beer decomposed quickly, this condition led them to keep the beer refrigerated throughout the journey to wholesalers. Coors was able to solve this problem thanks to the construction of a brewery and a bottling plant in strategic states, in this way the beer lasted longer without spoiling and they obtained savings in shipping costs.
Distribution is a basic aspect that determines the future of a new company, Martin Lindstrom (2006) affirms that the placement of a product in areas of interest is crucial to be able to create a positive association between the brand and the place.³ Jones Soda Co Performed a similar distribution strategy, which consisted of locating personalized refrigerators in places frequented by young people such as tattoo parlors, skate shops, clothing stores and music stores, obtaining favorable results, later they introduced the sodas to the centers. self-service, large chains of coffee shops and groceries.
In addition to the aforementioned Geomarketing applications, it is also useful for studying the competitive environment of a certain area, in which there is a large number and saturation of similar companies that finally end up eliminating each other. The study and use of Geomarketing as a discipline is very recent and little demanded, which represents an opportunity for companies to identify growth options where they did not previously see them with normal distribution strategies, in addition to avoiding errors that lead to loss of money and time.
References
George, Pierre. (1984). Economic Geography, Barcelona, Ariel, p.11
Fabián, Escobar, Hamdan and Hernández. (2001). Economic Geography, Mexico, Mc Graw Hill, pp. 1-20
Cateora, Philip R. Graham, John L. (2001). International Marketing, Mexico, Mc Graw Hill, 10th ed. p. 554
Ghemawat, Pankaj et al. (2000). The strategy in the business panorama, Mexico, Pearson Educación, pp. 126, 5.1-5.11
Lindstrom, Martin. (2006). Brandchild, Mexico, CECSA p.146
Chasco, Coro. Geomarketing and Commercial Distribution, Spain, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, pp. 6-13.
