By Darla Martin Tucker

To help students take better aim at understanding capricious consumer behavior, the La Sierra University School of Business wants to incorporate lessons in geographic information systems.

The business school plans this fall to line up a seminar or presentation for graduate students on geographic systems often used to plan marketing and business development. The software systems, called GIS, create digital maps that can help pinpoint potential customers, competitors and other data. If enough students are interested in the subject, the school may hire someone to teach GIS classes, said John Thomas, business school dean.

The incorporation of GIS is part of the school’s cross-disciplinary approach to understanding why consumers do what they do. “I love to use every tool I can,” Thomas said. The school intermixes psychology with business by offering consumer behavior classes and blends in theology by offering a course on work place spirituality. The school also allows students to take political science, math, game theory and law, Thomas said.

GIS software systems create digital maps built from layers of data, such as location of roads, utilities, buildings, vegetation, lakes, rivers, cities and other data. All the data can be combined and printed or specialty maps can be printed using only certain layers.

GIS systems create the maps using shapes called polygons, points and lines, much like the points and lines on paper maps. Shapes of buildings are examples of polygons on GIS maps.

Building, road and other infrastructures data can be combined with household income levels, population age ranges, ethnic data and other variables culled from public and business databases. All the data can be combined to create maps of customer clusters, warehouse locations, competitor locations and other types of charts.

On March 4, La Sierra alumnus Michael Scofield provided La Sierra business students an overview of the sorts of maps and data compilations GIS systems can create. His talk was part of the school’s Paul Cone Distinguished Guest Lecture Series.

Scofield is manager of data asset development at Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. in Redlands. The privately held firm, known as ESRI, develops GIS software products for hundreds of organizations and government agencies around the globe, including states and counties, cities, police departments, banks, oil and utility firms, forestry companies and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Customers use ESRI’s products to plot new markets, direct emergency vehicle routes, track criminal activity, develop cities and assess damage and evacuation data during disasters.

ESRI, begun in 1969 by Jack and Laura Dangermond, is a founding leader in its field. The company has more than 2,500 employees in the United States with 1,800 in Redlands. In 2006, the company posted more than $660 million in revenue, according to its Web site. ESRI is “aggressively hiring,” Scofield said.

Scofield’s presentation included maps showing household income and net worth by census block group for the Riverside area, including around the university, as well as graphics depicting ethnic clusters around Los Angeles and Chicago.

He discussed the impact of soaring vehicle gas prices on consumers’ decisions and in turn, on retail businesses’ marketing strategies. “Americans will have to radically change how they commute, shop and seek recreation. This will change traffic patterns for retail businesses” and for education, health care and other “customer contact” services, Scofield said.

“For retail businesses to be successful in this new economy, they will need to do more astute site selection and better understand the demographics and other characteristics of populations and neighborhoods,” he said. “GIS combined with demographic data allow this analysis into current and future population characteristics [that is] essential for retail success.”

Scofield graduated from the La Sierra campus of Loma Linda University in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics. He earned a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Scofield’s career spans decades working for Hunt-Wesson Foods Inc., Home Savings of America, Experian and other large firms leading data warehouse projects, performing data source and marketing analyses and other tasks. He previously served as an assistant professor of health information management at Loma Linda University and continues to teach there for various schools and administrative departments.

He has presented approximately 150 lectures and workshops for professional organizations around the United States and in the United Kingdom and Australia. He was keynote speaker at the Australian Data Asset Management Association conference in Canberra in 2001 and 2005.

Scofield is the recipient of the 2008 Data Asset Management Association’s International Community Award, presented in San Diego last month for outstanding contribution to the education of the data management community.

While not all business students need to acquire GIS skills, “in the general business curriculum all students should be aware of the spatial analysis techniques for retail planning,” Scofield said.

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)