How consultants size a market in a new country, city by city

A consultant sizes a market in a new country by picking the cities that matter, drawing the same area around each, and measuring three things in every one: how many businesses of the type there are, how many of them belong to chains, and how many residents there are for each business. Done the same way in every city, those three figures give a ranking the client can trust and challenge, and they show where a newcomer would face crowded streets or empty ones.

This article is for strategy and market-entry consultants, and for in-house teams who answer the question "should we go to this country, and where first?". It covers the method, how to read the figures honestly, a worked example on gyms, the traps that make a country look bigger or smaller than it is, and an AI employee that refreshes the study every month.

The three measures, and why they travel

Spending data, rents and regulations differ from country to country and take weeks to collect. Counts of places do not. A gym is a gym in Toronto and in Sydney, and xMap's places database describes both with the same fields. That makes three measures comparable across borders:

• Supply. The number of businesses of the type within a fixed area of each city. Nearby places set to count gives the total listed, not just the nearest 500.
• Structure. The share that belongs to a chain, and which chains lead. A market held by three brands is entered differently from one of thousands of independents.
• Demand proxy. Residents per business, from Demographics divided by the count. Population figures exist only in some countries, among them Canada, France, India, Thailand, Egypt and Australia, but not the United Kingdom or the United States.

How to read the figures

Use one area definition everywhere: the same radius from each city centre, or each city's own boundary in the Area of interest, but never a mix. Read supply and structure together: many businesses and a low chain share usually means a fragmented market where a well-run brand can stand out; few businesses and a high chain share means the leaders have already taken the obvious streets. Residents per business then tells you whether the count is high because the city is big or because the market is crowded.

A worked example: gyms

A fitness brand asks which of three English-speaking markets to enter first. A first pass on the city centres:

Within 10 km of each city centre, xMap's places database, November 2026.

On supply alone London looks biggest. The chain shares are close, about a quarter in each city, but the leaders differ: almost a third of Toronto's chain gyms carry one brand, while Sydney's are spread more evenly across three. That is a positioning question for the client, not a size question.

The demand step is where countries part ways. Sydney and Toronto have population figures, so residents per gym can be worked out for each city and each district. London has none in xMap's population grid, so the study uses supply, structure and footfall there, and says so on the slide rather than filling the gap with a guess. A made-up illustration of the arithmetic: if a district had 120,000 residents and 40 gyms, it would have 3,000 residents per gym; a neighbouring district with 90,000 residents and 15 gyms would have 6,000, and would be the one to look at first.

Mistakes to avoid

• Comparing a city's whole metro with another city's centre. Fix the area first. Most bad market-entry slides fail here.
• Quoting one search's nearest 500 as the city total. Use the counting setting, which returns the total listed in the area.
• Treating categories as identical. Check that the type you count means the same thing in each country. Look at a sample of names before trusting the totals.
• Filling missing population with an estimate. Where population is not available, say so and lean on footfall and supply. A made-up denominator ruins the ranking.

Doing it with an AI employee

Build the study as a flow and it stays current while the client decides. The blocks in order: Schedule (the first of each month), Area of interest (the cities or their districts), Nearby places counting the type, Demographics over the same areas where available, a Calculated field for residents per business, Sort and limit by it, an xMap LLM block that writes the summary from the table only, and Make a report as slides. What lands in the inbox each month is the refreshed table, the ranking and a short note on what moved since last month.

Start from Market entry study, refreshed monthly or Market size of a category across cities, and add Chains against independents, city by city for the structure view.