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Anyone have an idea as to where I may find Wal-mart, etc. store locations data in a format MP can import?

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Scott

Hey cableghost

I did this with Starbucks locations this way.

a) go to walmarts www site and find the page with the store locator service.

b) do some examples - with the following URL

http://www.walmart.com/storeLocator/...e=35&x=29&y=17

if you replace the search_city and search_state runing through the alphabet and states you'll get them all. i.e. A CA, B CA, A OR, Z WA, ....

c) now you see the type of results you are going to get write a VB Program to run through all 59 state abr. and 26 letters of the alphabet (1539 combinations). Use this type of code inside a two loops and run through the letters and states:

<pre>
Dim xobj As Object

xurl = "http://www.walmart.com/storeLocator/ca_storefinder_results.do?" _
& "sfsearch_city=" & this_alpha & "sfsearch_state=" _
& this_state & " &sfsearch_zip=&continue=35&x=29&y=17"

Rsp_Text = ""
Set xobj = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")

xobj.Open "GET", xurl, False
xobj.SetRequestHeader "Content-type", "text/html"
xobj.Send

Rsp_Text = xobj.ResponseText
rsp_status = xobj.Status

</pre>

You'll have to mess with the xurl string to get the quotes just right and set the two varriables for this_letter and this_state. Once it works...

You can now parse the results of the Rsp_Text string to get the details of the stores returned and the fields you want - they seem to have Store Name, Store Number, Street Address (Street, City, Region, ZIP) and Phone Number). You likely want to dump this data into Excel or Access then do some deletion of duplicate store numbers. The whole effort shouldn't take you more than a day and a half. A day to get the programming and 1/2 a day to run it.

You could do the same approach and loop through the vaild zip codes. While that maybe a easier program (i.e. one loop). The execution might take longer as you have a lot more vaild zips. You can find a table of valid zip codes here. http://phaster.com/zip_code.html

If you like I can do this and give you an MS Access MDB with all the USA WallyMart Stores. Drop me a line and we can agree on a price.

Good Luck,

__________________
Calv1ns

It looks like someone has already gone through the steps, and is selling them in CSV format for cheap, which you can import into Excel and then put into MapPoint. I found Walmart, Best Buy, and a bunch of others. They've all got longitude/latitude coordinates, too.

AggData | All the data you need.

It looks like that someone is you?
About the Site | AggData
hehe. Good luck.

I have done some work with a company DataSource Technologies, Inc. :: Your GIS Solution that has well over 1M retail location records in a wide range of industries.

Eric