Imagine you're standing at the edge of a town, considering where to open your next office. Or branch. Or flagship store. You’ve got the maps, traffic data, local demographics, even your competitors marked out in red.
But the real question isn’t 'where'. It’s 'why' someone would come.
That’s where gravity steps in. Not Newton’s apple-to-the-head variety, but the marketing kind - drawn from Reilly’s Law of Retail Gravitation, formalised in 1931, and refined by David Huff in the 1960s.
Reilly’s version says people will travel further to shop at a larger, more attractive store - but only up to a point. There's a tipping point where convenience outweighs scale. Huff took it further. He developed a probabilistic model to predict not just if customers would come, but how likely they’d choose your store over another, based on size, distance, and perceived attractiveness.
In Newton’s world, gravity pulls mass towards mass. In our world, it pulls people toward places and brands.
And that pull - your marketing gravity - is a function of two things:
Your offer (how large, relevant, compelling, or delightful it is)
Your friction (how far someone must go, how hard it is to engage, how annoying the experience feels)
Bigger brands exert more pull. Better experiences reduce friction. Combined, they create loyalty that defies postcode boundaries.
Gravity models aren’t just academic toys. They inform serious decisions in estate agency, retail, hospitality, and financial services. They answer questions like:
Where should we open next?
How far will customers travel for this offer?
Which location is cannibalising the other?
What happens to footfall if we close this branch?
And now, in the digital era, geography meets psychology.
Distance is no longer just miles - it's mental bandwidth, app usability, delivery times, brand trust.
We still follow gravity in a world of instant delivery and infinite choice. But now it's the gravity of effortlessness, familiarity, and "I saw them first."
Yes, location still matters. But so does attractiveness, brand strength, and experience design.
More on this digital stuff tomorrow.
The next time you hear “location, location, location,” remember: It’s not just where you are. It’s how strongly you pull.
MarketingStrategy RetailPlanning HuffModel ReillysLaw CustomerBehaviour EstateAgency BrandGravity SpatialAnalytics OmnichannelMarketing UnchainedFriday LinkedInLeadbetter
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