Trade Area
Where a location's visitors come from, decomposed into the home and work areas that supply them and each area's share of visits.
What does Trade Areas tell me?
Trade Areas show where a location's visitors originate. For a chosen location, it lists the areas that supply its visitors, split by whether that area is the visitors' home or their work location, with each area's share of total visits.
It answers "where do the people who come here live and work," which is the basis for catchment, site-selection, and market-reach analysis.
What questions does it answer?
- How far does this location draw its visitors from?
- Where do most of its visitors live, and where do they work?
- Does it rely on a local catchment or pull from a wide area?
- Which surrounding areas contribute the most footfall?
- How does the catchment shift around holidays or events?
Reading this cadence
Each row is one origin area for the period this page covers. Longer cadences give a more stable catchment picture; shorter cadences show how the catchment moves over time.
How it's produced
Visitors to a location are attributed to their inferred home and work areas, then aggregated so each origin area carries its share of the location's total visits.
How to read it
- Home vs work. A row's type tells you whether the origin area is where those visitors live or where they work. Read the two separately; a commuter hub and a residential suburb tell different stories.
- Shares are per location. The fraction is the origin area's share of that location's visits, so the shares across a location's origin areas describe how its catchment is distributed.
- Origins, not journeys. Trade Areas describe where visitors come from, not the sequence of places they visit. For movement between places, use Visitor Journey. Small origin areas may be suppressed for privacy.
Related metrics
- Foot Traffic, the total visits these origins add up to.
- Visitor Journey, the onward and prior movements of those visitors.
- Visitor Demographics, who the visitors are.
Country- and dataset-specific behaviour (coverage, geography units, exclusions, release timing) is documented on each dataset in its country catalog.
Schema
This is the standard schema for the metric. Always check the schema on the specific dataset you're using, since small variations may occur per country, map, or cadence. See the list of datasets using this metric below.
Map columns (e.g. ZIP code, state, brand, polygon) are usually exposed on each dataset as available columns that aren't included by default. They're not listed here because each dataset is connected to a different map and therefore has a different set of map columns available. Open a specific dataset below to see its full schema.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| location_id | STRING | Unique identifier of the location. |
| trade_area_location_id | STRING | Identifier of the origin area supplying visitors. |
| trade_area_type | STRING | Whether the origin area is the visitors' home or work location. |
| observation_start_date | DATE | Start of the observation period. |
| observation_end_date | DATE | End of the observation period. |
| people_fraction | FLOAT | Share of the location's visitors originating from this area. |
| trade_area_display_name | STRING | Name of the origin area. |
| trade_area_polygon | STRING | Boundary polygon of the origin area. |
| trade_area_latitude | FLOAT | Latitude of the origin area. |
Datasets using this metric
See also
Metrics that are commonly read alongside this one.