Case Study: Marks & Spencer achieves deeper customer insight and smarter store planning with Precisely MapInfo Pro

Location intelligence enhances customer knowledge, helping Marks & Spencer drive retail success

Marks & Spencer, one of the UK’s leading retailers with over 15.8 million weekly store visits and 520 UK stores, tasked its Customer Insight Unit with better understanding customer behaviour, catchment areas and drivetime impacts to improve site planning and store performance. To meet this challenge the retailer worked with Precisely, selecting MapInfo Pro (and MapXtreme) as the location‑intelligence tools to visualise and analyse complex geo‑demographic, mobility and transactional data.

Precisely implemented MapInfo Pro and MapXtreme to integrate postcode and credit‑card data, drivetime and transport layers, and to build store‑location models without rewriting existing systems. The solution gave Marks & Spencer a more holistic, actionable view of customer mobility and behaviour, helped the business harness increasingly complex data, and supported store format diversification — including the launch of the successful Simply Food format.

Marks & Spencer

Michael Whitelegge

Senior Insight Manager, Information Systems, Customer Insight Team