Nearly 80 percent of big businesses, and a growing number of small and midsize companies, self-insure their employees’ health coverage. On average, that costs a business more than $13,000 per employee per year.

Most companies have also instituted wellness programs to improve the health of workers and decrease healthcare costs. Unfortunately, many wellness programs are not as effective as they could be because they overlook a key data point: the health implications of where an employee lives.

Research has proven that location carries with it many social, community, and environmental conditions that affect a person’s health—also known as social determinants of health. The impact of these factors reaches far beyond one’s home. It follows us everywhere we go, including into the workplace and the healthcare system.

Experiments in places such as Camden, NJ, have shown a greater than 50 percent reduction in healthcare costs for patients in certain geographies. With that in mind, employers who use location intelligence to analyse social determinants of health can create data-driven wellness programs designed to overcome barriers to good health and potentially cut costs.

While corporate executives routinely use data to drive business decisions, many of those executives are still investing in generic wellness programs designed without employee context.

The US Centers for Disease Control says too few employers are using effective, science-based workplace health programs that address unique challenges faced by employees. A geographic information system (GIS) allows companies to identify social determinants of employee health by creating a wellness map that identifies top inhibitors of a healthy lifestyle based on where employees live. Such technology can also reveal health-promoting resources in those same communities.

Today’s Corporate Healthcare and Wellness Landscape

In 2016, the number of companies that self-insured at least one health plan reached 41 percent, up from 30 percent in 2000. Self-insurance has the potential to offer employers significant financial advantage, but only if they can control costs.

Corporate wellness programs were introduced in the mid-1970s to address employers’ cost concerns by encouraging employees to adopt and maintain healthy behaviours. Johnson & Johnson’s trailblazing Live for Life program began in 1979 and included a questionnaire and physical exam. The company subsequently provided employees customised wellness support including fitness, nutrition, and stress management tips.

Since then, the market for corporate wellness has grown significantly. Ninety-nine percent of firms with 200 or more employees offered at least one wellness program in 2013, according to one study. Of those employers, 69 percent offered gym membership discounts or on-site gyms, 71 percent offered smoking cessation programs, and 58 percent offered weight-loss incentives.

The reasons for such programs are clear. For example, compared to employees of healthy weight, obese workers may incur more than double the cost for healthcare, workers compensation, and short-term disability. That could add up to an additional $4,000 per year, per employee, one study found. Additional health complications such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol drive that number even higher.

The Missing Element: Location

Extensive research has been conducted in recent years proving that a person’s environment directly impacts the ability to live a healthy lifestyle. The world is beginning to take notice, as evidenced by a December 2018 tweet from U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams:

Ana Lopez-De Fede, Ph.D., research professor and associate director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina, has studied how a person’s place of birth and where they live influence their work environment.

For example, in a single-vehicle household, one family member typically takes that vehicle to work, limiting the rest of the family’s access to resources like grocery stores, workout facilities, and libraries. Those family members miss medical appointments more frequently, and the lack of routine visits ultimately leads to a higher rate of preventable emergency rooms trips and inpatient hospitalizations.

But the single-car phenomenon is just one of many factors that influence employee health. Others include the rate of particulate matter in the air where they live, access to exercise opportunities and healthy foods, and the ratio of local primary care physicians. Plotting these social determinants of health on a GIS-driven map can give employers a better sense of what ails employees—and what drives healthcare costs. That awareness often leads to innovative remedies.

To explore a few of the social determinants of health in your neighbourhood, click through this map. (To view each factor on its own, deselect all other factors.)

“Utilizing GIS, an employer can determine the reasons behind high medical costs by understanding context as it relates to employees’ geographic location,” says Lopez-De Fede. “An employer can then determine reasonable costs of healthcare and create contextually relevant wellness programs that improve the quality of life of their employees, while also addressing those high medical costs.”

Academic studies have confirmed Lopez-De Fede’s findings. The National Research Council found that a variety of place-based influences can affect health, including physical circumstances (e.g. altitude, temperature, and pollutants), social context (e.g., social networks, access to care, perception of risk behaviours), and economic conditions (e.g., quality housing and access to health insurance).

Another study found that the increasing epidemic of obesity and chronic disease is likely influenced far more by food and eating environments than by individual factors such as knowledge, skills, and motivation. The finding underscores the importance of making the healthy choice the easy choice, a mantra in the public health community.

Location Viewed as the “Seventh Vital Sign”

Business executives can take a cue from healthcare practitioners such as Lopez-De Fede, who are now examining location-based determinants of health for each patient.

Southern California’s Loma Linda University Health has created personalized “wellness maps” for each of its patients, based on the belief that location is one of a patient’s vital signs.

Loma Linda creates the maps using GIS technology, digitally layering information on top of geographic locations. Each patient can access a personalized GIS wellness map through Loma Linda’s patient portal for electronic health records. On the map, the patient sees her personal health resources (clinics, providers, labs, and pharmacies) as well as community resources such as bus transportation routes, and places to exercise or purchase nutritious food. Each map is updated as the patient’s diagnosis changes. For example, an expectant mother will see a very different map than a patient with diabetes.

Utilizing Location Intelligence to Improve Wellness in the Workplace

Self-insured businesses are already driving healthcare innovation in the workplace by offering new care models like telemedicine and on-site clinics. The next step will be using GIS-based location intelligence to develop more effective health and wellness programs.

Dr. Lopez-De Fede says employers should begin by asking themselves questions related to their employees’ unique health challenges and associated costs, such as, Where do my employees live? What’s going on outside of the office?

GIS helps employers answer these questions by analysing health-related information in the context of location. Data is gathered at a group level to protect employee privacy, and its analysis can help employers find solutions to health barriers. For instance, if employees aren’t picking up prescriptions or are missing doctor appointments, an employer could create an in-network pharmacy closer to the office and create flex time for appointments.

Once employers have used location intelligence to identify employee barriers to health, they can create more effective wellness programs that address location-based challenges faced by employees. Examples include:

• Develop key partnerships in employees’ communities to improve access to and awareness of wellness resources such as pharmacies, fitness clubs, grocery stores, and transportation resources. (The North Carolina Institute of Public Health in partnership with the Carolinas HealthCare System is doing this for its patients, using GIS.)
• Add to the insurance network pharmacies and health clinics in underserved neighbourhoods
• Allow employees to have groceries delivered to the office and provide them a place to store them
• Provide free exercise classes in the workplace, and hold a 5K walk/run in underserved communities
• Decrease stress associated with long commutes by offering shared transportation options (e.g., vans, carpools)
• Create a teacher mentorship program to transfer best practices from healthy communities to less-healthy communities
• Offer an app that lets employees and their families build an exercise routine based on nearby green spaces, bus routes, gyms, bike shares, sunrise/sunset times, and more
• Create personalized wellness maps that show employees resources in their communities

Wellness programs are often designed with the best intentions and the hope that they balance good health with good economics. But in the age of data-driven decisions, employers can use more than hope to drive results. Innovative, self-insuring companies are now using location intelligence to help promote employee health, reduce costs, and improve productivity.

Daniel Humm, owner and head chef at Eleven Madison Park (EMP) in New York, had big news this spring. His upscale restaurant—one of only 13 in the US to earn three Michelin stars—would henceforth be strictly vegetarian. It was like BMW announcing it would discontinue car production to focus on its bicycle line.

Few businesses contemplate—let alone implement—such a radical rethinking of product offerings. But any change—whether carried out by a small restaurant, regional brand, or national franchise—requires a close understanding of what customers want and how much change they will tolerate. Companies often can find this insight in data related to consumer preferences and psychographics, viewed through the lens of location intelligence.

Consumer Preferences in Flux

The change Humm is bringing to EMP is undeniably bold. As the Wall Street Journal noted, Humm, like most prestige chefs, built his reputation on meat and seafood dishes. Worldwide, Michelin awarded three stars to just one vegetarian restaurant this year: King’s Joy in Beijing.

But Humm’s announcement, made as the city began to relax coronavirus-related occupancy requirements, was also well-timed. As the world wakes up from the COVID-19 pandemic, change is in the air. A recent Forrester study found that 75 percent of us say the pandemic will lead to long-term changes in our behaviour and experiences.

Evidence suggests that interest in plant-based diets could be part of this reappraisal. A study commissioned by Proagrica, an agriculture and animal health technology company, found that nearly 20 percent of people in the UK ate more vegetarian food during the first year of the pandemic, and the same percentage plan to make the habit permanent. An especially intriguing data point for the restaurant industry: nearly 40 percent of respondents said they would consider ordering plant-based meat alternatives in restaurants, including fast-food establishments.

As savvy businesses adjust their offerings to acknowledge these and other consumer changes, they would do well to rely on location intelligence as a guide, because it reveals where important trends and consumers may intersect and can help assess new approaches and strategies.

Sensing Consumer Preferences Geographically

For a retailer, manufacturer, or service company considering bold changes, the first step is to understand what its customers and potential customers want. Just as it would be foolhardy to increase umbrella inventory in a desert region, it makes little sense to sell novel items or experiences in areas where the demographics and psychographics don’t indicate support.

When Carl’s Jr. tries to sell customers on its plant-based Beyond Famous Star Burger, and Del Taco promotes its Epic Beyond Original Mex Burrito, they want to know where such products are likely to be successful. To that end, many companies, including restaurant chains, apply a location intelligence strategy when they optimize their locations and their offerings.

For instance, using a geographic information system (GIS), some companies analyse anonymized social media data to understand consumer preferences in certain locations. A chain planning where to introduce vegetarian options might use GIS to identify geographic clusters of people who voice support for animal rights or plant-based diets. Human mobility data—similarly anonymized—can reveal consumer preferences and patterns much as it revealed social distancing practices to public health officials during the COVID pandemic.

On the Move

Not only are tastes and habits shifting in ways that can be hard to grasp without the help of location data, but people’s physical locations are as well. Overall, the number of people making permanent moves has increased modestly since the start of the pandemic—but certain metro areas are experiencing dramatic shifts in population size or makeup.

As companies contemplate major changes in the post-pandemic environment, they’ll want to delve into these demographic shifts to better understand market potential.

Using GIS, companies can analyse the demographic breakdown of urban, suburban, and rural markets and, through smart maps, visualize the location of certain buyer personas. They can even enlist the AI capabilities of GIS capabilities to uncover consumer clusters that are not immediately apparent.

Strategic-minded brands round out that analysis with psychographic insight on consumer preferences. Psychographics can be useful in discovering geographic locations with high concentrations of people concerned with wellness lifestyles, for instance. The same techniques could reveal areas where healthy eating is a primary concern. Savvy GIS analysts create maps showing these patterns, providing product marketers, merchandise planners, and real estate executives with useful intelligence for near-term and strategic plans.

As the world emerges from what we can only hope is the worst of the pandemic, shifts in consumer preferences are likely to accelerate. Companies can make the most of these changes by anchoring data in a coherent framework of location intelligence.

This article originally appeared in the global edition of WhereNext.

Nearly 80 percent of big businesses, and a growing number of small and midsize companies, self-insure their employees’ health coverage. On average, that costs a business more than $13,000 per employee per year.

Most companies have also instituted wellness programs to improve the health of workers and decrease healthcare costs. Unfortunately, many wellness programs are not as effective as they could be because they overlook a key data point: the health implications of where an employee lives.

Research has proven that location carries with it many social, community, and environmental conditions that affect a person’s health—also known as social determinants of health. The impact of these factors reaches far beyond one’s home. It follows us everywhere we go, including into the workplace and the healthcare system.

Experiments in places such as Camden, NJ, have shown a greater than 50 percent reduction in healthcare costs for patients in certain geographies. With that in mind, employers who use location intelligence to analyse social determinants of health can create data-driven wellness programs designed to overcome barriers to good health and potentially cut costs.

While corporate executives routinely use data to drive business decisions, many of those executives are still investing in generic wellness programs designed without employee context.

The US Centers for Disease Control says too few employers are using effective, science-based workplace health programs that address unique challenges faced by employees. A geographic information system (GIS) allows companies to identify social determinants of employee health by creating a wellness map that identifies top inhibitors of a healthy lifestyle based on where employees live. Such technology can also reveal health-promoting resources in those same communities.

Today’s Corporate Healthcare and Wellness Landscape

In 2016, the number of companies that self-insured at least one health plan reached 41 percent, up from 30 percent in 2000. Self-insurance has the potential to offer employers significant financial advantage, but only if they can control costs.

Corporate wellness programs were introduced in the mid-1970sto address employers’ cost concerns by encouraging employees to adopt and maintain healthy behaviours. Johnson & Johnson’s trailblazing Live for Life program began in 1979 and included a questionnaire and physical exam. The company subsequently provided employees customized wellness support including fitness, nutrition, and stress management tips.

Since then, the market for corporate wellness has grown significantly. Ninety-nine percent of firms with 200 or more employees offered at least one wellness program in 2013, according to one study. Of those employers, 69 percent offered gym membership discounts or on-site gyms, 71 percent offered smoking cessation programs, and 58 percent offered weight-loss incentives.

The reasons for such programs are clear. For example, compared to employees of healthy weight, obese workers may incur more than double the cost for healthcare, workers compensation, and short-term disability. That could add up to an additional $4,000 per year, per employee, one study found. Additional health complications such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol drive that number even higher.

The Missing Element: Location

Extensive research has been conducted in recent years proving that a person’s environment directly impacts the ability to live a healthy lifestyle. The world is beginning to take notice, as evidenced by a December 2018 tweet from U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams:

Ana Lopez-De Fede, Ph.D., research professor and associate director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina, has studied how a person’s place of birth and where they live influence their work environment.

For example, in a single-vehicle household, one family member typically takes that vehicle to work, limiting the rest of the family’s access to resources like grocery stores, workout facilities, and libraries. Those family members miss medical appointments more frequently, and the lack of routine visits ultimately leads to a higher rate of preventable emergency rooms trips and inpatient hospitalizations.

But the single-car phenomenon is just one of many factors that influence employee health. Others include the rate of particulate matter in the air where they live, access to exercise opportunities and healthy foods, and the ratio of local primary care physicians. Plotting these social determinants of health on a GIS-driven map can give employers a better sense of what ails employees—and what drives healthcare costs. That awareness often leads to innovative remedies.

To explore a few of the social determinants of health in your neighbourhood, click through this map. (To view each factor on its own, deselect all other factors.)

“Utilizing GIS, an employer can determine the reasons behind high medical costs by understanding context as it relates to employees’ geographic location,” says Lopez-De Fede. “An employer can then determine reasonable costs of healthcare and create contextually relevant wellness programs that improve the quality of life of their employees, while also addressing those high medical costs.”

Academic studies have confirmed Lopez-De Fede’s findings. The National Research Council found that a variety of place-based influences can affect health, including physical circumstances (e.g. altitude, temperature, and pollutants), social context (e.g., social networks, access to care, perception of risk behaviours), and economic conditions (e.g., quality housing and access to health insurance).

Another study found that the increasing epidemic of obesity and chronic disease is likely influenced far more by food and eating environments than by individual factors such as knowledge, skills, and motivation. The finding underscores the importance of making the healthy choice the easy choice, a mantra in the public health community.

Location Viewed as the “Seventh Vital Sign”

Business executives can take a cue from healthcare practitioners such as Lopez-De Fede, who are now examining location-based determinants of health for each patient.

Southern California’s Loma Linda University Health has created personalized “wellness maps” for each of its patients, based on the belief that location is one of a patient’s vital signs.

Loma Linda creates the maps using GIS technology, digitally layering information on top of geographic locations. Each patient can access a personalized GIS wellness map through Loma Linda’s patient portal for electronic health records. On the map, the patient sees her personal health resources (clinics, providers, labs, and pharmacies) as well as community resources such as bus transportation routes, and places to exercise or purchase nutritious food. Each map is updated as the patient’s diagnosis changes. For example, an expectant mother will see a very different map than a patient with diabetes.

Utilising Location Intelligence to Improve Wellness in the Workplace

Self-insured businesses are already driving healthcare innovation in the workplace by offering new care models like telemedicine and on-site clinics. The next step will be using GIS-based location intelligence to develop more effective health and wellness programs.

Dr. Lopez-De Fede says employers should begin by asking themselves questions related to their employees’ unique health challenges and associated costs, such as, Where do my employees live? What’s going on outside of the office?

GIS helps employers answer these questions by analysing health-related information in the context of location. Data is gathered at a group level to protect employee privacy, and its analysis can help employers find solutions to health barriers. For instance, if employees aren’t picking up prescriptions or are missing doctor appointments, an employer could create an in-network pharmacy closer to the office and create flex time for appointments.

Once employers have used location intelligence to identify employee barriers to health, they can create more effective wellness programs that address location-based challenges faced by employees. Examples include:

• Develop key partnerships in employees’ communities to improve access to and awareness of wellness resources such as pharmacies, fitness clubs, grocery stores, and transportation resources. (The North Carolina Institute of Public Health in partnership with the Carolinas HealthCare System is doing this for its patients, using GIS.)
• Add to the insurance network pharmacies and health clinics in underserved neighbourhoods
• Allow employees to have groceries delivered to the office and provide them a place to store them
• Provide free exercise classes in the workplace, and hold a 5K walk/run in underserved communities
• Decrease stress associated with long commutes by offering shared transportation options (e.g., vans, carpools)
• Create a teacher mentorship program to transfer best practices from healthy communities to less-healthy communities
• Offer an app that lets employees and their families build an exercise routine based on nearby green spaces, bus routes, gyms, bike shares, sunrise/sunset times, and more
• Create personalized wellness maps that show employees resources in their communities

Wellness programs are often designed with the best intentions and the hope that they balance good health with good economics. But in the age of data-driven decisions, employers can use more than hope to drive results. Innovative, self-insuring companies are now using location intelligence to help promote employee health, reduce costs, and improve productivity.

Tucked away in a recent Vodafone report on digital transformation is this unexpected finding: 41 percent of UK executives worry that IoT technology is too complicated for their business, and 36 percent don’t understand the Internet of Things.

The findings serve as a useful reminder that the lifespan of buzzwords can be shorter than the adoption curve of the technologies they describe.

While IoT remains relevant, marketing cycles have moved on to artificial intelligence, Geoblockchain, and other emerging trends. The tacit message is that IoT has already become a foundational business technology—and for some companies, it has. But as the Vodafone survey reveals, a significant number of businesses feel intimidated or left behind by the promise of IoT.

An Optimistic Thought

The Vodafone survey starts out cheerily enough. The telecom giant interviewed 2,000 companies in the United Kingdom and found that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) believe that IoT will better their operations. Sixty-seven percent are already using IoT technology or plan to within the next two years.

Respondents held roles in strategy or technology planning and hailed from a diverse group of companies, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. Not surprisingly, large enterprises are more likely than their smaller cohorts to expect that IoT will transform their business operations.

The survey didn’t offer details on why 41 percent of business leaders feel hamstrung. But they could be paralyzed by the possibilities. When IoT is lauded for its ability to change everything, as it often is, some business executives might struggle to identify the one thing it should change first.

Starting with a Win

In a 2016 article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, a pair of Boston College professors offered guidance to executives unsure of where to begin with IoT. Start small, the professors advised. Identify a business question that has gone unanswered due to a lack of data, and consider whether IoT technology might deliver that data. They also advised exploring other options before deploying IoT technology. If a problem can’t be solved any other way, it might be a perfect pilot project for IoT.

In a 2017 WhereNext Think Tank, Esri’s Kevin Bolger discussed how businesses can get started with IoT. He offered the example of a food manufacturer that created an IoT pilot project for the supply chain:

The Thrill of Discovery

One characteristic of the most successful IoT projects is their use of location data. In the Think Tank discussion, Bolger noted how private companies—among them insurers and retailers—are getting smarter about using publicly available, location-specific IoT information.

For example, when Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area, businesses used publicly available, real-time IoT data to understand where the storm was moving; what impact it was having on rivers and creeks; and how best to safeguard employees, customers, and facilities. In Bolger’s words:

Whether the IoT data comes from public sources or from a company’s own deployment, it often helps answer the questions that keep executives up at night. For the 41 percent of decision-makers who worry that IoT is too complicated for their business, the expert opinion seems to be this: start small, but start now.

Finding retail workers to accommodate holiday crowds is going to be tough this year. A booming economy means a smaller labour pool from which to draw staff for peak shopping season, according to the CNBC article “Retailers are hiring for the holidays, but are there enough workers?”

To boost the chances of finding holiday staffing, some retailers may use employee incentives and location intelligence technology in their recruitment efforts.

Retailers already understand that locating their best customers is key to business growth. But what about locating the best job candidates and employees? Beating the competition and improving the bottom line depends as much on staff as it does on customers—especially when the cost of replacing an employee averages nine months of salary.

Now, with the US unemployment rate near a 50-year low and many employers reporting difficulty filling open positions, retail companies face a significant holiday challenge. According to Deloitte, retailers expect to hire 5% more seasonal workers this holiday season than last. Target will bring on 120,000 seasonal workers, a year-over-year increase of more than 20%. Macy’s, Kohls, Best Buy, and others have also announced plans to increase holiday hiring in 2018.

Wooing Staff with Incentives

According to CNBC, retailers are stepping up perks and offering higher-than-average starting wages to attract employees. Macy’s will give seasonal workers performance-based bonuses previously available only to full-time employees. JCPenney’s is going as far as offering seasonal employees a week of paid time off during their employment.

Incentives like those and Target’s $12 hourly starting salary are likely to raise the holiday tide. But retailers still face a mammoth task in finding employees to handle customer demand for the next few months. Indeed, many businesses are already having problems filling regular job openings, and we haven’t yet reached the holiday shopping rush when retailers will need to flex up dramatically.

Smarter Recruiting

In the search for qualified holiday staff, innovative retailers will turn to the location intelligence tools they’ve traditionally used to reach customers. In the article “Economy Gives Employees Power to Choose,” Esri’s Helen Thompson writes that geographic information system (GIS) technology can act as a competitive intelligence tool and information resource for finding staff near retail locations:

With location intelligence tools, HR executives can examine demographic and cost-of-living data to identify geographic areas with promising candidates. In addition, areas with good access to public transportation can be prioritized on smart maps, helping to ensure job accessibility for seasonal workers.

In a perfect world, full employment wouldn’t be a problem for employers. But this holiday season, it will present a formidable challenge to retailers across the country. Businesses that employ location intelligence for smarter staff prospecting may gain a competitive advantage—a skilled and full workforce—during retail’s most critical season.

Tech startup PopUp Shops is expanding beyond its native Houston, connecting businesses with short-term retail space nationwide, according to a recent article in Houstonia magazine.

Likening itself to the Match.com for brands seeking spaces, PopUp Shops capitalizes on retail closures to help companies connect with customers. Popup stores are growing in popularity as manufacturers and brands look for direct-to-consumer opportunities. These temporary spaces offer a place to test the market for products and reach new, often younger, consumers.

PopUp Shops uses online maps to reveal available locations and details such as daily rental rates. Some of the agreements it facilitates can be as short as five days—just enough time for the renter to hold a flash promotional event.

Locating the Right Audience

For businesses, popups can serve as marketing research labs—a place to evaluate new-product appeal through real-time customer feedback. But before opening their temporary doors, brands must determine whether a retail location will attract its target customers.

In search of areas with the greatest short- or long-term potential, data-driven companies use customer segmentation and location intelligence technologies to determine the consumer makeup of a prospective location. Through detailed analysis of demographic and psychographic data, a geographic information system (GIS) reveals what categories of consumers live in an area and their potential affinity for certain products or brands.

Because of its temporary nature, a popup store lowers the renter’s risk and commitment while delivering valuable location-based data of its own. In-store cameras can record anonymous foot-traffic behaviour, revealing which products or displays draw the most attention from visitors. Store staff can interview popup visitors to gauge their reactions to the experience and to specific products. When that feedback is plotted in a GIS, it unveils regional preferences for certain products and services, helping the brand create localized merchandise plans and reduce deadweight inventory.

Short-Term Appeal Spans Industries

The popup experience is not restricted to retail. Restauranteurs have set up temporary kitchens in parks, plazas, and galleries to introduce diners to new chefs and menus. In London, frozen-food purveyor Birds Eye opened a short-term restaurant and served dishes created with the company’s products. Diners paid their tabs by taking a picture of their meal and posting it on Instagram.

Popup shops are a product of a fast-moving economy and consumers who push businesses to stay relevant. Forrester principal analyst James McCormick calls this the age of the customer, noting in a recent podcast:

Manufacturers, brands, retailers, and other businesses must innovate faster than ever to attract customers and build relationships. The popup model offers short-term venues for companies to test products, redesign customer experiences, and collect valuable location data. Popup Shops’ recent expansion serves as an indication that this short-term option may just be here for the long term.

Listen to Debbie Hauss, editor-in-chief of Retail Touchpoints explains how companies use location analytics to keep customers coming back for more, in this podcast.