Daniel LeBlanc

Real estate factors play an important role in a company’s location strategy. The specific location characteristics of a company such as Dollarama that is expanding while others are faltering are important to study as they may lead to insights into the emerging discount retailer sector and changing nature of the retail environment as a whole. This study examines the Dollarama store locations from 1992 to 2018 on both a macro scale (such as target market distribution) with a cluster analysis, and at a micro scale (such as placement within a shopping center) with data collected and classified from a number of sources.
The results show a specific strategy of locating stores within less affluent communities as the main target market. These are the consumers most likely to shop at Dollarama and so are specifically targeted in Toronto and the rest of the CMA. In terms of placement within a shopping center, Dollarama favours mid- to low-level developments, taking generally non-anchor type positions close to supermarkets that carry complimentary product selections. The results also show indications of the retailer beginning to expand its target market though, with more anchor type locations in the smaller centers and outliers in higher end developments such as Square One Shopping Center. The retailer’s simple store design and marketing, coupled with a strong ability to scale in size, makes it an agile company when it comes to real estate, able to fit into many different types of settings and saturate urban markets where others might not be able to follow.