Determine market area assuming customer goes to closest

[EliasSassi]

Hello. I'm using Business analyst online. I wonder how I can calculate market area for company with assumption that customer chooses closest company for him/her. Is there a tool which has option to calculate always closest company and create market area with that knowledge?

[RodrigoNB]

Using BAO, for each point of sales you have to create a site, which has its own area of influence around it. For the area of influence you can choose between a circle, walking time service area or a driving time service area. You have to provide the radius or the time for each type. The site has the market around it.

Otherwise , you may use the ArcGIS Network Analyst extension in ArcGIS Pro to locate closest facilities or to plan the location allocation facilities.

I don't recall if you can start with a location and find the closest store using BAO.

[EliasSassi]

Thank you for answer. So in conclusion, influence area cannot be determined manually, it must be drive time, distance or walk time?

Follow-up question, can I determine those areas in Network Analyst extension and export areas to business analyst? And is there a tool which can measure site's area in square kilometers? I use couple different driving times as influence area and I'd like to know exact size of that area.

[RodrigoNB]

Elias, yes, you can use any polygon geometry as input for a site and quantify the market there. You can draw a polygon or you can use any geoprocessing model to get what you believe is appropriate. Using Network Analyst helps, although BAO has basic functionalitty to draw the drive/walk time for you around a point to get to its influence area.