Uncovering Site Selection Strategies using Point of Interest Data

The analysis of site selection strategies for large restaurant brands in the US reveals that proximity to other POIs, such as restaurants and shopping centers, plays a significant role in determining their locations. The study used data from Safegraph's Core Places dataset and found that similar brands tend to cluster together, with first-order neighbors often being from the same sub-category or top-category. Modeling the density of selected POIs showed that distance-based attributes significantly improved predictive accuracy compared to models only including urbanity and business density. The analysis also revealed that the density of selected POIs decreases with distance to closest POI, but not as much for POIs in the same category.