Courtney StahlmanShippensburg UniversityCapstone GIS ProjectFall 2016

Objectives

References

Introduction

Methods and Data

Results

In 2015, the retail industry in the United States hadrevenues of $5.3 trillion. If automobiles, gas, andrestaurants were excluded from this then therevenue would be $1.2 trillion. Looking at Amazon,CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart, they had a combinedtotal of $531 billion dollars. This is 10% of the totalmarket and 44% of the market when excluding theautomobiles, gas, and restaurants. E-commerce salesaccounted for 8% of total retail sales in the secondquarter of 2016 and have increasingly grown eachyear. Amazon is the leader in this market so far withowning 26% of all internet retail sales.

This lab was completed by first downloading ashapefile of the United States from the US CensusBureau. Next, a select by attribute was done with anSQL statement of state name = Pennsylvania or statename = Maryland or state name = West Virginia orstate name = Ohio or state name = New York or statename = New Jersey. This allowed for only the states inthe study area to be selected. A new layer was createdfrom the selected features and they were thenprojected onto the USA Contiguous Equidistant Conicprojection, in order to preserve distance, with theiroutput being saved into the file geodatabase namedFinal Project. Next, data was located online and typedinto excel of the addresses of the warehouses and theaddresses of the stores for the companies of Amazon,CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart. Amazon warehousedata was found from Avalara Incorporated. CVS storeand warehouse data was found on their website.

Walgreens store and warehouse locations was foundon their website. Walmart store locations were foundon their website, and their warehouse locations werefound from WMPVL, a supply chain consulting firm.Each one was given a separate excel file saved in theCSV format in order to upload to QGIS to make theprocess of geocoding easier. Each spreadsheetcontained the street address, the city, the state, andthe country in order to match the fields required forQGIS to operate. Once done, the shapefiles wereopened in ARCMap with each company's warehousesand stores projected onto the USA ContiguousEquidistant Conic projection, making sure to savethem in the file geodatabase. The warehouses weresymbolized as squares and the stores as circles using adifferent value within the same hue to signify theseparation of the companies.

The results of this project were actually surprising.Before finding all the data, the assumption was thatWalmart would have the most store locations due tothe fact that it was the top grossing retailer. However,looking at table 1, this is not the case because CVS hasthe most stores in the study area and Walgreens hasthe most stores in the United States. The reason forthis could be due to the fact that a Walmart store israther large, and takes up more real estate while aCVS or Walgreens can rent space out in smallcomplexes, hospitals, or even in another store. In fact,in the study area there are 285 CVS stores that arelocated inside of a Target. However, comparing figure2 and figure 3, a Walmart store is more likely to belocated in a rural area compared to the twodrugstores. This can be attributed to the fact thatthere is more space for a Walmart to be constructedthere than in the city. Also, in the city there is anincreased population resulting in more people, whichrequires more store locations.

Another interesting analysis of figure 2 and figure 3 isthat most of the warehouses are located inPennsylvania and fewer stores located in WestVirginia. There are a total of 33 warehouses with 16 ofthem being located in Pennsylvania, accounting for48% of the total warehouses in the study area. Thereason for this could be due to geography of theinterstate system in the state. There are a few majorhighways that connect the Pennsylvania to the rest ofthe United States. In West Virginia, the topography ofthe state makes it difficult for businesses to locatethere. The mountains in the area make it hard toconstruct buildings and it is difficult for trucks tonavigate roads that have steep gradient.

Amazon Fulfillment Center Locations [Internet]. c2016. Avalara Inc; [cited 2016 Dec 7].CVS pharmacy [Internet]. c2015. CVS Health; [cited 2016 Dec 7].Retail Industry Analysis 2016 - Cost & Trends [Internet]. c2016. FranchiseHelp Holdings LLC; [cited 2016 Dec 7].The Top 20 Highest - Grossing Retailers and Their Real Estate Power [Internet]. 2015 Aug 13. Bisnow: (NY): Bisnow; [cited 2016 Dec 7].The Walmart Distribution Center Network in the United States [Internet]. c2016. MWPVL International Inc; [cited 2016 Dec 7].US Census Bureau. 2015. "cb_2015_us_state_500k", 1:500,000. Distributed by US Census Bureau [cited 2016 Dec 7].Walgreens [Internet]. c2016. Walgreens Co; [cited 2016 Dec 7].Walmart [Internet]. c2016. Walmart Stores, Inc; [cited 2016 Dec 7].

The first objective was to download a shapefile of thestudy area states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, NewYork, New Jersey, Ohio, and West Virginia. Thesecond objective was to find data of the locations ofthe warehouses of the study companies of Amazon,CVS, Walgreens, and Walgreens that were situatedwithin these states. The third objective was to finddata of the locations of the stores of the studycompanies that were situated within these states.The fourth objective was to record the locations inexcel to then use for geocoding. Ohio

New York

Pennsylvania

West Virginia

Maryland

New Jersey

Research QuestionWhere are the warehouses and stores of Amazon,CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart located in Pennsylvania,Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and WestVirginia?

The purpose of this research project was to identifythe locations of the warehouses and stores ofAmazon, CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart. Anotheraspect of this project was to examine and analyze thespatial distribution of these stores in the states ofPennsylvania, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland,and West Virginia.

Purpose

Figure 1: Reference mapshowing the study area that wasfocused on during the project.

Focusing on Amazon, CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and West VirginiaSpatial Analysis of Distribution Centers and Store Locations

Company Walmart Walgreens CVS AmazonTotal Sales $ 343 Billion $ 72 Billion $ 67 Billion $ 49 BillionDCs in Study Area 18 2 3 10Total Stores in US 5,109 8,157 7,808 NoneStores in Study Area 721 1,029 2,016 NoneMD Stores 64 85 221 NoneNJ Stores 86 194 334 NoneNY Stores 182 372 556 NoneOH Stores 191 241 378 NonePA Stores 158 121 471 NoneWV Stores 39 16 56 None

Table 1: The annual retail sales for 2015, along with how many stores and distributioncenters are in the study area. The breakdown of how many stores for each companyare located in each state.

Figure 2: The locations of Amazon distribution centers andWalmart distribution centers and stores.

Figure3: The locations of CVS distribution centers and stores andWalgreens distribution centers and stores.

Mygo Consulting Inc, 2016

ConclusionsThe objectives were completed in order to find asolution to the research question of where thewarehouses and stores of the select companies werelocated in the study area. One thing that was learnedwhile completing this project was using QGIS. Thishelped to aid in the process of geocoding, speeding itup instead of using an address locator in ArcMap.Another thing learned while completing this project

was the appreciation of data that is already compliedin excel.A research question that was developed aftercompleting this project was what is the spatialdistribution of the warehouses and the stores of theother companies that are in the top ten grossingretailers in the same study area?

Amazon and Walmart

Walmart StoresWalmart Distribution Centers

Amazon Distriburion CentersWalmart E-Commerce Distribution Center

CVS and WalgreensCVS Distribution CentersWalgreens Distribution CentersWalgreens StoresCVS Stores