Nicole Serrafero

Foreign high-end retailers have started to establish their brands in Canada. There are several locations across Canada that contain a significant number of them. Using these existing established high-end retail locations, this paper presents potential new locations for these high-end retailers to expand into. The paper deals with six of the major census metropolitan areas (CMA) in Canada: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa. The demographic and household spending data at the census tract level were used to represent potential customers. Trade areas were created for each of the existing established high-end retail locations using 15-min and 20-min drive times. K-means cluster analysis was used to determine the results. Using a combination of the trade area demographics and the target cluster location, this paper has confirmed that there are potential locations, apart from existing clusters of high-end retailers, for foreign high-end retailers to expand into.