CONCLUSIONS




RESULTS

When comparing the census tract map (map 6) with the zip code map (map 1) it has been concluded that the populous areas of downtown, and just west, northwest and southwest are the best places to locate the UNIQUEitties business.  It is interesting to see that the competitor stores are already located in these areas.  By looking at map 1 most of the competitor stores are located mostly in the Southern and Central part of Travis county.  By looking at map 6 there are census tracts further north that are highlighted.  The highlighted areas are census tracts with over 1000 units that are occupied by the owner and with over 100 of those units that have a housing value of $200,000 - $300,000.
                                      Map 6                                                                                                                    Map 1
                                                Map 6                                                                                                                            Map 1

RECOMMENDATIONS

I think the new store should be located close to a competitor store, but also far enough away to tap in to an unknown resource of people.  The northern part of Travis County is growing due to the large businesses basing their company there, such as, Dell, IBM, Motorola, etc.  These areas are very affluent and it doesn't seem to have many competitor stores. It is my suggestion that one of the top three census tracts that are highlighted on map 6 would be a good location for UNIQUEitties new business.  These areas are close enough to other stores to possibly give their customers another choice and far enough away to reach other potential customers that no other store has done already.
 

LIMITATIONS

There are many limitations to this project that could have a great reflect on it's accuracy.

Competitor Stores

  • Not all potential competitor stores are represented on the map.  There are probably a few that were either not listed in the phone book or not listed on the internet.  There were also a few that did not have an address listed and only had a zip code or phone number.  This is probably due to those businesses working out of their homes and not wanting to disclose that information.
  • The phone book that was used was a year old and the stores listed may be out of business and there could be new stores that opened after the date of the phone book.
Census Data
  • The biggest problem I had was that I was not able to combine the census tract data with the city zoning or zip code data.  This was probably due to the zoning and zip code data coming from the city of Austin web site and was for the city of Austin, while the census data was by county only.  There were no attributes that were the same to enable me to combine the two sets of data.
  • Another problem was that the owner occupied housing data was very recent, from year 2000, but the most recent for the housing value data was from year 1995.  I personally watched Austin grow during those five years and there can be obvious and great discrepancies with having data five years apart.
  • It would have been much easier to use family income data to compare instead of owner occupied housing and housing value.  Unfortunately, income data was not available to download free of charge for Travis county or the City of Austin.


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