Key factors influencing retail store expansion decisions: case study of combining evidence- and data- driven approach

The traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores seek options to expand when they reach a certain point of growth. Such expansions can be in the form of a bigger retail store or opening additional retail stores. Most businesses leverage heuristics-based decisions to expand (often driven by financial performance). Existing literature on retail store expansion decisions fails to provide a complete view of factors that can influence the decision-making process. To address this gap in literature, this paper aims to identify the key factors that influence retail store expansion decisions. Our case study-based methodology is developed around a decade of data collected from 500 service-based brick-and-mortar retail stores operating in Australia and New-Zealand. Through an in-depth analysis of the literature and insights drawn from 10 years of operational data, we establish a list of factors that need to be considered to support retail store expansion decisions and drill down on the key factors that influence the decision-making process. Lessons learnt from the analysis of the data concludes the paper.