Location-Based Scenarios

A friend recently forwarded me some articles about location-based businesses. Reading the articles, it occurred to me that the key to making strategic decisions about such businesses is to examine what I'm going to call location-based scenarios (LBSs).

Recall that a scenario describes a step-by-step user experience with your product or service. For location-based businesses, you can focus on the possible user experiences that involve your location. E.g.:

Neighborhood resident drives to store
Commuter visits store on way home from work
Distant resident makes special trip to visit store

And you'll want to include various permutations of these scenarios based on the customer's mode of transportation (walk/drive/bus) and what she buys/does at the store.

Then, as you study your market (by interviewing and surveying prospective customers), you profile the different types and determine the likelihood that each of them will participate in a given use case. You locate and position your business by choosing the scenarios that will be most profitable. You optimize the customer experience for these scenarios.

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