GIS for Business and Social Decisions : Applying GIS to market segmentation. An empirical approach

The development of the information society and the improvement in new technologies, especially with regard to handling large amounts of data, now make it possible to manage volumes of data that would have been unthinkable just few years ago. This has created a new scenario around making business decisions. The information society has provided publicly available population databases, and new technologies have improved their performance in terms of processing power and data analysis capabilities in an extraordinarily short period of time. Advances in data storage standards also facilitate the use of this tool by reducing the cost of transformation, standardization and loading processes. Thanks to this framework, Geographic Information Systems are particularly important again and technical advances are used in business applications that are taking over the world of business often related to location decisions,and more recently for marketing and social aspects. However, little has been written about the importance of establishing a methodology to manage and take advantage of GIS as part of a Decision Support System. This book provides a clear and occurate methodology for it.