Retail co-location tier methodology
A retail co-location cluster earns a tier by passing a fixed set of gates, not by accumulating points toward a score. The [[location-intelligence-platform|Location Intelligence]] platform assigns every cluster one of four tiers — Regional, District, Local, or Fringe — by testing composition, catchment population rank, civic support, and overlap with stronger neighbors against country-specific thresholds. A cluster either clears every gate for a tier or it does not; there is no partial credit and no composite number a customer would need to interpret.
Why gates instead of a score
An earlier version of this methodology combined proximity distances into a single continuous score. That approach was retired: a composite number invites the reading that the platform is forecasting financial outcomes, when what it actually measures is spatial proximity and brand diversity. The gate-based system makes that boundary explicit in the mechanism itself — the tier is a classification, not a projection of revenue, foot traffic, market share, or a recommendation to acquire, develop, or lease any site.
Tier definitions
| Tier | Name | What it represents |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Regional | A major trade-area anchor — top decile nationally by primary catchment population |
| 2 | District | A significant multi-format node — top quartile nationally by primary catchment |
| 3 | Local | A hardware or wholesale hub with civic support |
| 4 | Fringe | Any cluster that does not clear a Tier 1–3 gate |
Tier names follow the shopping-center industry's own Regional → District → Local hierarchy, so the labels mean the same thing here that they mean in a leasing broker's vocabulary.
What a cluster must clear
Every tier requires all of its gates to pass — composition, catchment rank, civic support, and non-overlap:
- Composition — which categories of capital-intensive anchor must co-occur. Regional requires a warehouse-club or lifestyle anchor alongside a hypermarket; District requires a hypermarket alongside hardware or warehouse; Local requires a hardware or warehouse anchor on its own.
- Catchment population rank — each cluster's primary catchment population is ranked against every other cluster within its own country, not globally, so a Tier 1 cluster in a smaller market is compared to its own market's distribution rather than penalized for that market's overall size. Regional requires the top 10% nationally; District the top 25%; Local the top 50%.
- Civic support — a minimum count of regionally or locally classified hospitals within the cluster's outer catchment ring. Regional requires a regional-grade hospital; District accepts a regional or district hospital; Local accepts any classified hospital.
- Non-overlap — a cluster that sits mostly inside a stronger neighboring cluster's own catchment does not additionally qualify at a lower tier for the same geography. This is measured as the overlap between the two clusters' catchment areas; Regional clusters must be almost entirely non-overlapping with any stronger peer, District clusters allow more overlap.
Threshold precision is intentionally coarse — the goal is separating nationally significant clusters from local ones, not producing a precise numeric ranking. Threshold refinement is an active area of ongoing work.
What is deliberately excluded
Neighborhood grocery formats (operating in the thousands of small-footprint locations per country) are not ingested as anchors. Their density would produce a large number of low-value clusters below any threshold useful for site selection — a deliberate scope decision, not a data-coverage gap.
Relationship to the platform
The tier assignment is what the map interface renders directly — the Conclusion-First design shows a cluster's tier, not the gate values behind it, so a user comparing markets sees the conclusion first and drills into the underlying anchors only when a cluster has earned that attention. GIS orchestration application computes tier assignment from the cleansed cluster data; the result renders through [[location-intelligence-substrate|the platform's rendering stack]] as the tiered map layer.
Forward-looking information
Statements regarding threshold refinement and future methodology changes are intended targets subject to change. Actual timelines depend on operator review, data coverage, and development velocity. [ni-51-102] [osc-sn-51-721]
See also
- Location intelligence platform — the platform this methodology scores clusters for
- GIS orchestration application — the engine that computes tier assignment
- Location intelligence substrate — the technical architecture that stores and renders tiered clusters
- Location intelligence UX design philosophy — the interface design that displays tier conclusions