Australia’s Top 20 favourite Shopping Centres
Chadstone in Melbourne and Westfield Parramatta in Sydney are the clear kingpins of destination retail—but not all shopping centres appeal to the same crowds, a new State of the Nation Retail Spotlight from Roy Morgan Research shows.
In the financial year to June 2015, 16.5 million Australians 14+ (85%) shopped at one or more shopping centres in an average four week period. Chadstone was the top destination, with 396,000 Australians a month dropping some dollars there, just ahead of Westfield Parramatta with 385,000.
Also making the top five shopping centres by their average four-week customer volume are Melbourne Central (307,000), Westfield Chermside in Brisbane (303,000) and—just 15km north of Chadstone—Westfield Doncaster (290,000).
Melbourne is home to eight of the top 20 shopping centres overall, with Highpoint, Northland, Bourke Street Mall, Fountain Gate and Knox City each hosting over a quarter of a million shoppers a month. Another five of the top 20 are in Sydney and four are in Brisbane, with Rundle Mall in Adelaide, Westfield Carousel in Perth and Robina Town Centre on the Gold Coast rounding out the list.
Top 20 Shopping Centres
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source, July 2014 – June 2015, sample n = 14,987
Nearly half of all Australians agree they’ll go out of their way in search of a bargain (48%), but some shopping centres seem to attract a more discount-hungry clientele—with the top three all in Queensland: 69% of those who shop at Australia Fair or Queen Street Mall agree, as do 65% of Brisbane’s Myer Centre shoppers.
Just 22% of Australians agree they will buy products because of the label—but shoppers at Westfield Bondi Junction in Sydney’s eastern suburbs have a distinct weakness for premium brands, at a rate nearly twice the norm (43%).
Shoppers at Melbourne Central are the most likely to agree they enjoy clothes shopping (65%), compared with the norm of 40%, while you can also expect more prolonged browsing at the racks at Emporium (62%) and Westfield Parramatta (60%).
Over four in ten shoppers at Westfield Parramatta, Westfield Woden or Cairns Central agree that credit enables them to buy the things they want, compared with 31% of Australians.
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source, July 2014 – June 2015, sample n = 14,987. Shopping centres with n <100 respondents who shopped there in the last four weeks during the period have been excluded.
Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan Research, says:
“1 in 10 Melburnians shop at Chadstone in a four week period, and another 30,000 or so of the centre’s Australian customers live further afield in Victoria or interstate.
“Department stores, large retail chains and supermarkets have outlets in many, if not all, of the country’s main shopping centres—and yet each location might cater to a very different set of customers. So of course you can expect vastly different sales results unless you pick the right spot or adjust the stock, ambience, offers and advertising to suit the area.
“Using our Helix Personas segmentation tool, we can drill down to a really specific type of customer. For instance, David Jones and Myer each have stores in both Westfield Warringah Mall and Castle Towers in Sydney’s north. But at Warringah, over 1 in 5 shoppers are Bluechip (one of the few Personas more likely to shop at David Jones than Myer), while shoppers in Castle Hill are disproportionately Status Matters (who are almost four times more likely to buy from Myer than David Jones).
“This sort of profiling can also help expanding chains and international entrants like H&M and Uniqlo pinpoint optimal sites for future outlets, by matching current (or ideal) customers with the shopping centres those people already shop at regularly.”
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Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
