Our client, an international oil company operating one of the largest fuel station networks in Hungary, recognised that beyond fuel, additional products and services could be sold at certain stations — but the shop-area remodelling required would involve significant investment at each site.
The task was to identify which stations the transformation could pay off within a reasonable timeframe, and to provide the evidence base for making those investment decisions confidently.
The problem
The company decided to transform a number of its stations to a new “shop format” in response to increasing demand for products and services that had previously been sold primarily in supermarkets. Research consistently indicated that fuel station networks would increasingly serve as general product sales and service points — but acting on this across an entire network without a clear site prioritisation framework would be costly and unpredictable.
The question was not whether to transform, but which stations to transform first, and in what order.
What we did
We performed a detailed location and micro-market analysis for every station in the network, determining the expected turnover for each potential shop format at each site.
For each location, we:
- Examined the immediate surroundings and defined its catchment area
- Conducted a detailed demographic analysis of the population in the catchment
- Analysed car and pedestrian traffic patterns
- Identified competitor locations and quantified their impact on available market demand
- Assessed the specific product and service demand characteristics of each site
The outcome
Every station in the network was ranked according to whether we recommended transformation, and if so, at what priority level. The cost of the analysis tool we delivered was significantly lower than the cost of a single unnecessary or missed rebuild.
Results were delivered as an interactive, dashboard-based map tool designed for regular use — enabling the client to continue assessing the network as market conditions change, rather than treating the analysis as a one-off project.