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A GUIDE TO RETAIL IMPACT STUDIES <br />It may be desirable to aggregate reported values into one value for grocery and one value for <br />non-grocery items, as in the first table above. Indeed, circumstances may call for further <br />forecasting by line of goods. However, greater specificity, particularly in small communities, <br />risks publicly forecasting the decline or closure of a specific local business, which should be <br />avoided as some retailers can and do successfully restructure their businesses. <br />Maine's Informed Growth Act requires the analyst to evaluate the impact of the proposed retailer <br />on existing retail operations. Although the analysis should avoid speculating about the future of <br />any particular business, an estimate of the number of business in the impact area likely to see <br />their sales affected to a meaningful extent by the proposed retail development could be made <br />by determining how many existing businesses carry overlapping lines of goods in categories in <br />which the new retailer is forecast to have significant market impact. The analysis should also <br />estimate the total volume of sales the proposed retailers is expected to draw from existing <br />merchants. <br />18 <br /> <br />