Dissolve By Attribute

Available with Business Analyst license.

You can use the Dissolve By Attribute functions on the Sales Potential Modeling wizard with the output from the original or advanced Huff model and dissolve the attribute probability field. For example, you can create primary, secondary, and tertiary trade areas based on the output probabilities of the original Huff model. The output from the Huff Model tools in Business Analyst creates a probability for each subgeography unit in the study area. For example, the output from the Huff models creates a probability of households in each block group for patronizing a new store location.

The Dissolve By Attribute option allows you to collapse the probability attributes in the block groups to create trade areas. For example, you can create three trade areas with the following:

• 70–100 percent
• 40–70 percent
• 10–40 percent

In this case, the layer created would contain the three polygon features based on the ranges above. You can use these trade areas to target potential clients in these areas to suit your business needs, such as marketing campaigns or sales territory generation.

Use Dissolve By Attribute when you want to aggregate and dissolve features based on a specified attribute or attributes. For example, you could take a layer containing sales data collected on a county-by-county basis and use the Dissolve By Attribute option to create a layer containing contiguous sales regions based on the name of the salesperson in each county.

Learn more about Dissolve by Attribute.

1. Click the Business Analyst drop-down menu and click Sales Potential Modeling.

   The Sales Potential Modeling wizard opens.

2. Click Create Modeling Analysis and click Next.
3. Click Dissolve By Attribute as the type of modeling analysis and click Next.
4. Click the first drop-down menu and click the results from an original or advanced Huff model. If you have preselected particular trade areas, the check box is visible and available to check.
5. Click the second menu and click the field you want to use in creating the trade areas. (In the case of the Huff models you have created, this will probably be the GM_PROB field.) Click Next.
6. Click the number of probability rings you want and type the probability using decimal points (for example, enter 60% as .60.60). Statistics are shown with the minimum, maximum, and mean probabilities for your reference.
7. You can click the Create donut trade areas check box to if you want to create donut trade areas. Click Next.
8. Type a name in the text box to save the new probability trade areas, type any comments, then click Finish.

Your new trade area layer is created and displayed on the map.