By Dr. Tony Hernandez and Marco Biasiotto

This current research report documents significant and new insights into the real estate decisions of major Canadian retail organizations.  The report provides a useful set of benchmarks  with respect to the status of retail corporate planning in Canada and by extension permits some useful comparisons to international-based retailers who are headquartered in other countries. 

The research has confirmed the fact that while retail decision-making is not entirely a rationale process, there are a number of common decision triggers that relate to performance metrics, competition and real estate trade-offs.

The CSCA would like to thank those organizations who participated in the research and were willing to provide details of their corporate locational philosophies.  Without the openness of these organizations, the results of the paper could not gone have gone beyond the theoretical.