Site selection is like any area of expertise – the only sure-fire way to develop the skills necessary to obtain real mastery is to put in years and years of practice. There is simply no replacement for the value of experience when the success of your company’s development program is at stake.
In recent years the market has become flooded with new technologies that claim to let you instantly forecast sites at the press of a button. On the surface this seems like an appealing alternative. But one expensive real estate mistake can give you a painful lesson in the hazards of an approach that relies more on technology than experience. On the flip side, many of the biggest location consulting firms have key experienced people overseeing operations from the top of the organization but the actual day-to-day work is often handed off to relatively inexperienced analysts. At Area Research Associates we offer the best of both worlds – the latest in technology harnessed by people whose entire careers have been devoted to site location research.