Town offers new tool in wooing retailers

The town is targeting about 20 retailers that it feels are well-matched with current residents’ buying preferences, and it is arming developers with “psychographic profiles” of residents that could prove to be powerful tools in wooing retailers.

The target list includes Applebee’s, Bath & Body Works, Best Buy, Border’s, Cracker Barrel, Dillard’s, Famous Footwear, Kohl’s, Lowes, Marble Slab Creamery, Office Depot, Outback Steakhouse, Pacific Sunwear, Petland, Sherwin-Williams, Sizzler, Sportsman’s Warehouse, Target, United Artists Theaters and Wendy’s.

The town also has a secondary list that includes another 100 retailers, including many other well-known names, from Ace Hardware to the Village Inn, plus some retailers already in town, such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens.

This approach came about after the town in September hired the location expert Buxton CommunityID, based in Fort Worth, for $70,000, to investigate residents’ buying habits and to draw up profiles that can be used in attracting retailers.

Buxton Territory Business Manager Robert H. Belcher on Feb. 6 gave a presentation at Town Hall that explained how the profiles are obtained, saying they are based on some 250 national data bases, including credit card spending at the home address level.

Several dozen developers and real-estate agents attended the presentation. Among others, Rancho Sahuarita Senior Vice President Cort Chalfant said he was impressed with Buxton’s ability to factor in credit card purchases, because that would give a real-time picture of consumer buying habits.

Chalfant said private sector actors must follow up on the data, but said the profiles could prove invaluable. He noted that Rancho Sahuarita spent $5,000 to hire location consultants hired by Fry’s in order to provide Fry’s with an airtight case for locating in Rancho Sahuarita. He said the Buxton information might help speed up such processes in the future.

In the past, retailers often relied on demographic profiles of communities that included age, incomes, sex and race, information that is readily available from census data, but which in the case of Sahuarita is woefully outdated.

The last official census figures, from 2000, say the town population is 3,242, and reflect none of the population of Rancho Sahuarita or KB Home, for example. The actual town population exceeds 20,000, officials say.

Those who are trying to attract retailers have given up on using eight-year old census data and now count the number of homes by using data they buy from the Postal Service on delivery routes. That’s a method that supports the population figure of 20,000 or more, Craig Finfrock of Commercial Retail Advisors said.

And the mere number of households or residents is not enough to help convince Retailer A to move to Town X anyway, Belcher said.

Retailers want to know how many of those families, for example, drink white wine or Bud Light; how many subscribe to Barron’s financial news or Field and Stream magazine; how many prefer to eat at Chili’s Grill or Boston Market, if they own a BMW or Dodge Ram, and have a home entertainment center or a power boat.

Belcher said Buxton employs more than 250 databases to investigate consumers’ lifestyles, purchasing behavior and media consumption habits. Using that information, Belcher said, the U.S. consumer population can be broken down into 66 distinct segments, and notable among the Sahuarita and Green Valley markets are:

Segment 9, Big Fish, Small Pond people, who are college-educated empty-nesters who spend freely on computer technology, belong to a country club, shop at Talbots and own a motor home and Cadillac.

Segment 28, Traditional Times folks, middle-class couples who own RVs, live a “grits and granola” lifestyle, eat at Shoney’s restaurants, order from L.L. Bean catalogs, read Catholic Digest and tend to belong to veterans organizations.

Segment 38, Simple Pleasures couples: those over 65 from blue collar backgrounds, most of whom served in the military, who often watch horse racing on TV and watch the “Price is Right” three times weekly; and rely on Medicare.

The data are based on future population projections centered around the area of Sahuarita Road and Alvernon Way and factor in a 15-minute drive time rather than a geographic distance from that starting point, Belcher said.

pfranchine@sahauritasun.com |547-9738