Medical report Room for another practice?
GP, pharmacy and allied health demand against supply.
Medical benchmarksNational Overview
Headline numbers across all 37 retail categories tracked nationally.
Browse by Retail Category
Click a category for the full benchmark dashboard — supply by state, GCC, region, distance, opportunity analysis and rankings.
Cross-Sector Rankings
National leaderboard ranking the 37 retail categories by access — population per store.
Regional Benchmark Table
Compare every retail category side-by-side across regions. Click any category to open its dedicated benchmark page.
Tip: click a category heading or value to update every chart below.
No regions match that filter.
Store Catchment — National
Tiles sized by total locations in the selected scope. Switch the scope using the State / Metro / Regional toggle on the table above. Click any tile to drill into that benchmark.
SA3 Distribution Profiles — National
How each category's supply is distributed across SA3 regions in the selected scope. Swipe through categories — toggle between population-per-store and distance-to-nearest.
Correlations & Co-Location
Supply correlations plus three co-location matrices across all 12 anchor categories: same area (suburb-sized SA2), closeby (a few street blocks) and same complex (single building). On mobile, tap a heading to expand each matrix.
About These Retail Benchmarks
How AreaSearch builds, verifies and benchmarks every retail location in Australia.
What's in the dataset
This page is built from AreaSearch's database of verified retail locations across Australia — a continuously maintained inventory of every retail location with a fixed, publicly-listed trading address. Every record is geocoded to a precise latitude and longitude, validated against public registries and business directories, and assigned to its Australian Bureau of Statistics statistical area for like-for-like benchmarking.
Coverage spans 37 retail categories from supermarkets and shopping-centre anchors through to fast food, fuel, pharmacy, banks, telcos and a long tail of specialty retail. Each category benchmarks store supply against the latest ABS resident population at six geographic scales.
What's deliberately excluded
To keep the supply benchmarks comparable across regions, the dataset excludes any retail location without a fixed, verifiable street address. Specifically:
- Mobile and home-visit services — mobile services, pop-up stalls, food trucks, online-only operators, market-day stalls, and any retail format without a fixed shopfront.
- Operators without public details — locations whose street address is not publicly listed (e.g. private members' clubs, dealer-only trade outlets, or owner-occupied premises not advertised as retail).
- Unverified entries — a location is only included once AreaSearch has independently confirmed it operates at the listed address.
This means the population-per-store ratios you see represent the physical, walk-in catchment a resident can reach — not every operator that could theoretically serve the area.
Geographic breakdown
Every benchmark is reported at multiple ABS Statistical Geography levels — from the entire country down to a few street blocks — so you can size opportunities at the scale that matches your decision:
- National — one-line summary across all 37 categories in Australia.
- State — eight states and territories (NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT).
- Greater Capital City (GCC) — 16 regions splitting each state into "Greater Capital" (metro) and "Rest of State" (regional).
- SA4 — ~89 large sub-state regions (~300,000 residents each) suited to network-scale planning. Available to AreaSearch Pro subscribers.
- SA3 — ~340 mid-sized regions (~30,000–130,000 residents) — suburb clusters and regional towns. Used for the opportunity analysis and distribution profiles.
- SA1 / Mesh Block — ~25,000 SA1s (a few street blocks) and ~33,000 mesh blocks (same building / next door). Used for the closeby and same-block co-location matrices.
How the metrics are computed
- Population per store — the resident population of the area divided by the count of verified store locations operating in it. Lower is better access.
- Distance to nearest — Haversine geodesic distance from each location to its nearest same-category neighbour, and to the nearest residential mesh block centroid (a proxy for typical resident travel).
- Gap z-scores — how many standard deviations a region's population-per-store sits above or below the national mean. Z > 1 = meaningfully under-supplied.
- Co-location rates — of small areas where category A has a presence, the percentage that also have category B. Computed independently at SA3, SA1 and mesh-block scales.
- Cross-category correlations — Pearson correlation of population-per-store ratios across SA3 regions, showing which categories rise and fall together.
Who uses this data
These benchmarks support retail site-selection, network planning and competitive analysis for shopping-centre owners, retail REITs, franchisors, big-box and supermarket developers, fast-food operators, banks and telcos planning branch networks, government agencies and retail investors. If you need the underlying location-by-location dataset, SA3 drill-down, or a custom catchment study, contact AreaSearch.
Refresh cadence
The verified location inventory is refreshed continuously as registries publish updates and AreaSearch's verification pipeline confirms changes. Benchmark aggregates on this page are rebuilt quarterly. Population denominators come from the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics Estimated Resident Population release.
Find & Assess an Area or Site
Assess a specific property, retail site or trade area with AreaSearch catchment analysis. Search below to open an area, review the surrounding market and build a clearer view of retail opportunity. Contact us if you need help finding the best locations.
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Search a suburb,postcode or area
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Open thecatchment map
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Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers about how the retail benchmarks are calculated and what the data covers.
How is "population per store" calculated?
We divide the resident population of each statistical area (State, Greater Capital City, SA4 or SA3) by the number of retail category locations operating in that area. A lower number means a denser store network — fewer residents serviced by each store.
Where does the location data come from?
AreaSearch maintains a verified inventory of every retail category location in Australia with a fixed, publicly-listed trading address. Records are sourced from operator websites, public store directories, leasing schedules, council data, industry associations and first-party verification. Every location is geocoded to a precise latitude / longitude and assigned to its ABS statistical area.
What is an SA3 region?
SA3 (Statistical Area Level 3) is an Australian Bureau of Statistics geography covering 30,000–130,000 residents — roughly a mid-sized suburb cluster or regional town. Australia is divided into about 340 SA3 regions, which makes them a meaningful unit for benchmarking retail category supply.
Why are some regions flagged as undersupplied?
Our opportunity analysis compares each SA3 region's population-per-store ratio against the national mean for retail category. Regions more than one standard deviation above the mean (z > 1) are flagged as undersupplied — they have meaningfully fewer stores per resident than the typical Australian region.
How often is this data refreshed?
Location inventories are refreshed on a rolling basis and benchmark aggregates are rebuilt quarterly. The population denominators are taken from the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics Estimated Resident Population release.
Can I see the specific regions, street addresses or catchment maps?
SA4-level detail and below — including individual region names, catchment maps and street-level drill-down — is available to registered Pro users of the AreaSearch platform who also have access to the relevant retail sector or specific category cohort within their plan. Use the search box further down the page to look up any specific location.
How do I switch between retail categories?
Click any of the 37 retail categories in the picker above (or in the matrix tables further down). The URL, page title and every chart update to that category while the active scale (State / Metro / Regional) is preserved, so you can flip through quickly.