A data record has a spatial reference if it can be mapped geographically. The simplest example is an address: Sample street 1 in city XY. In order for the GIS to display the address, the data record must be provided with coordinates. This process is called “geocoding” because the street name and house number are not sufficient to be able to display the point on the map. Locations such as hotels, gas stations, branch locations, etc. have a spatial reference, that much is clear, but trees, fire hydrants and cell phone masts also have a spatial reference. In the corporate sector, up to 80% of all data has a spatial reference, which is why business analyses with GIS are so good. An example is customer data and sales. Even if you sell everywhere online, your customers have a place of residence and your sales have a billing address. Displaying the distribution geographically enables you to draw valuable conclusions about your target group.  An example of a non-spatial topic would be describing a chemical reaction: Under certain conditions, ammonia is formed from nitrogen and hydrogen. In this case, it does not matter where the reaction takes place.