Geographical Information Systems for Screening the Location Environment of Hypermarkets Lifetime Value: A Case of Hypermarkets in Penang, Malaysia

Recently, the hypermarket has faced major challenges on sustaining their position in the marketplace where lifetime value of business is difficult to determine. The main challenge is derived from its environment especially local based environment as refer to the location of hypermarket as their conducting the business. In fact, sustaining a lifetime value of business, via customer lifetime value (CLV) model has potentially for long lasting their performance, according to major works of CLV. However, the hypermarket still confront with some problems especially on how to continuously of keep on monitoring and screening their business environment as well as on what actually happens in the local environment. Any changes and issues surrounding the local environment will affect the business, either directly or indirectly. The objective of paper is to discuss the practical contribution of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) that can be used as tools for screening external environment, as well as analyzing the location that sources the business lifetime value. By utilizing GIS tools, it can enhance business competitiveness which can contributes to strategic formulation on marketing programs that routinely implemented by the hypermarket. As a case study, GIS will examine the local environment of Seberang Perai Tengah, Penang in Malaysia where GIS is used for visualized the socio-economic of the location. At the end, suggestion will be made on how to use GIS platform to strengthening the capability of CLV for prospecting the future lifetime value of customer with at the end will contribute to hypermarket lifetime value.