Locating a New Walmart in Minnesota

By: Andrew Vogel

Introduction

I am going to be looking at Walmart Stores across Minnesota and find prime locations to build new Walmart's stores. Instead of building large Walmart convenient stores I will plan on finding locations for Neighborhood Market Walmart stores which are smaller. Walmart has had a motive of selling products for cheaper prices than other convenient stores. Since they sell for the cheapest prices I will be focusing finding areas where a Walmart will be convenient for families with lower incomes and other factors that play a role in who shops at Walmart

Objective

My objective in this project is to locate patterns of where Walmart stores are located in Minnesota.

I will also look at census patterns from around already built Walmart's and use this information to find a new location.

I will create a Network of the roads and Walmart's to find the drive time (Miles) around Walmart's to find out where their stores are not located.

Finally I will locate new locations for a few new stores within the counties

Study Area

My study area will start with the entire Minnesota Region

After locating all of the stores I will focus on the Twin Cities area where the majority of the stores are located.

Methodology

Locating all Walmart locations by creating a table with Latitude and Longitude and displaying the X and Y onto my coordinate system

Creating a Kernel Density Map for the whole state of Minnesota to see if there is any pattern

Download Census Data for Anoka, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsay and Scott Counties from 2010 looking at Population, Median Income, Below Poverty Line, and Parents in Work Force

Joining Data from Census and data tables Download road layers for all counties and merging them together.

Methodology (Continued)

Creating a Network using the road systems and Walmart Locations and Walmart competitors

Using this Network to create a 2, 4, and 6 mile road distance from each facility and create a 1, 2, and 3 mile drive distance from competitors

Creating mean centers for each census tract using spatial statistics in order to perform Location Allocation for Walmart and competitors in west metro.

Creating a Location Allocation with my 16 Walmart and 14 competitors with a distance of 4 miles.

Create locations where Walmart's could be built and create another location allocation to see whether or not they will be good locations

Observation

After looking at all the census data I found a few locations to test to see whether they would be a good location to build a new Walmart.

These locations are located in Minneapolis, New Hope, and Wayzata, Minnesota.

I will determine whether these location will be good locations with my final map.

Two New Locations of Walmart’s in West Metro

New Hope LocationMinneapolis Location

Conclusion

In Conclusion I found two prime locations to build a new Walmart Neighborhood Market.

Based off all the census data, network analysis in drive time (Miles) and location allocation, I located in new Walmart's in New Hope and Minneapolis

The other Walmart located in Wayzata could be a good locations since there aren’t any in the area but it seems that there are too many competitive stores that will take the majority of the business.

Questions?

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