BAO Restaurant Data

[RyanPesch]

Hello Business Analyst people,

I do some retail-related research at the University of Minnesota and have used Business Analyst (desktop and BAO) for a number of years.  One thing I keep running up against when using the business layer is the systematic misclassification in this D+B data, especially with restaurants.  At least for Minnesota I keep finding most restaurants in the 'drinking places' NAICS category.  Sure, I would expect an American Legion or a VFW to be in either category, but not a Dairy Queen or Arby's.  I fully understand the challenge of a D+B or InfoUSA to keep an up-to-date record and expect issues in this data, but not to this extent. 

Is this a systemic issue any of you have run into?  Am I simply missing something? 

-Ryan Pesch,

University of Minnesota

[Jason_RobinsonRobinson]

Hi Ryan,

As I am sure you know the Esri 2015/2020 dataset for Business Analyst Desktop/BAO the business data source is back to InfoGroup.  The Esri 2013/2018 and 2014/2019 were using the Dun & Bradstreet business data.

As far as NAICS misclassification I suspect that it could be generally related to some known challenges with the D&B business when it came to franchisee-type business models as the business name would be the corporate entity name.

If have some good examples of NAICS misclassification with the current 2015 data release reply back with the details I would be happy to take a look and see what is going on.

Regards,
Jason R.