Retail Productivity in Europe: Norway is in the Lead

With an average turnover per sqm of around 6 000 Euro retailers in Norway can achieve Europe`s highest productivity with other Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Denmark or Sweden following behind. But also Russia succeeds to achieve a high retail turnover per sqm – thanks to a relatively small sales area. Thanks to the huge demographic potential concentrated in more than 100 cities with over 100 000 inhabitants Russia has a very attractive consumer`s landscape. Each consumer disposes of only 0,29 sqm retail area in Russia, in Austria consumers have around 1,72 sqm.

In Austria the retail productivity lies at about 3 900 Euro and thus in the European middle field. In spite of a very high sales area per capita the good retail turnover per sqm in Austria can be explained by the high purchasing power level and also turnover from abroad (shopping tourism).

High productivity rates can also be found in the Albanian or Serbian retail sector with around 5 500 Euro per sqm respectively 4 400 Euro per sqm. These figures can be explained by the huge backlog and the still low figures for sales area per capita. In most of the Eastern European countries, in which the sales area grew stronger than the purchasing power, the retail productivity is also lower. Due to the rapid development of shopping centres the increase of sales area was faster than the increase of turnover potential.