Smart businesses know who their customers are and where to find them. They know where and when trends are happening and when the atmosphere of a neighborhood is changing. Thematic Mapping is an extremely useful tool in acquiring this knowledge, because it allows a person to see physical, social, political, cultural, economic, sociological, and agricultural aspects of a city, state, region, or continent.
As you can imagine, this kind of map has many other different uses as well, such as studies of biology and political science. A politician planning an election campaign would do well to study trends in his or her region to determine a campaign strategy, for instance. Or a police department might focus their officers into areas with higher levels of crime. Essentially, there are an endless number of uses for these kinds of maps and the amount of information they can provide. This is invaluable for businesses in particular, whether they are planning on expanding, or embarking on a targeted marketing campaign. More knowledge means more profit!