How have we defined strategy? What simple assumptions are implied by this definition? What are the three levels of strategy in a business setting? How might geography (the facts that places are different and that overcoming distance takes resources) affect strategy at each level? How has Mennecke suggested that GIS could be useful in strategic planning and decision making? How does Goss (in Packet 2) critique the notion of "strategy"?
What are the four distinct retail location problems we reviewed in class?
What is the analog technique of retail site selection? What does it assume? What does it ignore? What information is required? How would an automated GIS help? Explain how we made use of this in one of the lab cases.
What is Reilly's "law of retail gravitation"? What are the key relationships involved? How could we measure "distance"? How could this "law" be used to estimate the primary market areas of a set of competing shopping centers? How would a GIS help in doing this?
What is the Huff model? (If I want you to use the formula, I'll give it to you. However, even without the formula, you should know what the Huff model is attempting to estimate, based on what variables. (Hint: the equation in my notes has only three variables -- P(Cij), Rj, and dij -- the other symbols are the parameter alpha and a summation sign.)).
Read the brief Seattle Times article on Starbucks locations. Which of the approaches to retail site location that we've used in class would lead to Starbucks ignoring "inner city" locations? (What does "inner city" mean, anyway?) Which approaches that we've discussed might lead to Starbucks targeting such locations?
What is the "ecological fallacy"? How can you reduce your susceptibility to it, when engaging in geodemographic target marketing? What is (what I've termed) the "consumerist fallacy"? How might you reduce your susceptibility to it, when engaging in geodemographic target marketing? What is the modifiable areal unit problem? How could you minimize the negative effect of this problem on your analysis?
Does the geodemographic approach presented on page 22 (and Fig 2.5) of the Martin & Longley Chapter in Longley and Clarke (in Packet 2) suffer from the ecological fallacy? The consumerist fallacy?
How concerned would you be in making location or marketing decisions,
based on geodemographic analysis? Based on
spatial analysis of competition? What are the alternatives to
these types of analyses?
How would you characterize the ethical issues involved in geodemographic marketing and database marketing? (You'll want to make use of the Goss chapter in Packet 2). Does what is being marketed (e.g., targeting AIDS prevention information to "at-risk" populations) make any difference? How would you attempt to resolve those issues, in your own use of GDIS?
Be able to name and define two measures of the central tendency of a distribution (e.g., of ages of students in this class, or scores on this test). Be able to define the standard deviation and interpret the formula. What are two uses of the standard deviation? What is a measure of the central tendency of a spatial distribution? (You can refer to Keith Clarke's Chapter 6, and to the PowerPoint presentation).
What are residuals in spatial analysis? How are residuals useful? It will probably help to refer to the analysis of female-to-male (human) population ratios in Keith Clarke's Chapter 6, and to the PowerPoint presentation).
Be able to describe and to critique the process you're using in the final lab case (also see the relevant lecture notes).
In Professor Thrall's presentation, what decisions was he trying to help Red Lobster make? What two criteria did he combine in a matrix of assessing Red Lobster's site locations? (See his slides regarding Red Lobster, saved as .gif files (PowerPoint is not necessary): slide one, slide two, slide three, slide four)
How does Goodchild distinguish geographic description and geographic analysis?
How might one distinguish a "loosely coupled" from a "closely coupled" analysis?
What were the two criteria that were considered in the case presented
by Falit-Baimonte (and discussed as Case Study 3 of Chapter 9 in the Clarke
book)? How do these criteria relate to criteria that might be used
in a public-service provision analysis? A retail site analysis?
