Community Economic Development Needs Assessment (survey) - Can be used to identify community-perceived economic development opportunities and challenges.

Business Retention and Expansion Assessment (program) - Can be used to identify strategies for retention and expansion of local businesses.

Reilly's Law (gravity model) - Can be used to determine the maximum distance customers will travel to shop in a certain community (county). The information can be used to develop a trade area map of the community.

Trade Area Capture (technique) - Can be used to tell how many customers are drawn to a particular community (county) to shop for a certain type of product at any given time.

Pull Factor (technique) - Can be used to determine the portion of customers a community (county) draws from outside its boundaries.

Potential Sales (technique) - Can be used to determine the potential sales volume for a particular retail or service activity in the trade area.

Location Quotient (technique) - Can be used to determine a community's degree of self-sufficiency in a particular retail or trade sector; to determine if a community is losing its local trade dollars to non-local markets, over time; and to determine if a community (county) is producing more than needed for its own use and is selling the excess to non-local markets (i.e., identify export activity).

Population-Employment Ratio (technique) - Can be used to measure the number of people in the local market per job in a particular trade or service sector. It can be used to make intercommunity comparisons of trade and service sectors.

Shift-Share Analysis (technique) - Can be used to measure how many new jobs were created locally due to national economic trends, and changes in industry-mix vs. the competitiveness of local industry.

Employment Multiplier (technique) - Can be used to determine how many new jobs will be created in a community (county) resulting from an external economic change.

Income Multiplier (technique) - Can be used to determine the impact of an external economic change on a community's (county's) income.

Industry Cluster Analysis (technique) - Can be used to identify clusters (industry clusters and supply-chain clusters) located within the community, or other clusters in nearby communities so that a community can participate.