Punctual or aperiodic

The data were collected in 2010.

Commercial enterprises owning at least one retail establishments were surveyed in the Retail Outlets Survey. The collection method depended on the size of the enterprises.

For enterprises owning from 1 to 39 establishments, a personalized questionnaire was available online; it contained the list of their current establishments according to the SIRENE register of firms and establishments (Computer system for the National Register of Enterprises and their Establishments), which were a priori in the field of investigation. A paper copy of the questionnaire was also available for those enterprises which did not want or could not answer electronically.

Enterprises owning at least 40 establishments had the additional option to answer the survey by means of a personalized Excel file, send to a secured Insee website dedicated to survey collection.

The single-establishment enterprises were surveyed through the ESA (Annual Sectoral Survey).Legal units with more than 40 establishments were surveyed through the simultaneous survey on retail networks.

In the event of incomplete or inconsistent responses, additional information was collected by post or by telephone.

The survey concerns the commercial enterprises and establishments located in Metropolitan France.

Local unit (of an enterprise)

The sample consists of enterprises (sampling units), providing individual information on each of their retail sales establishments (statistical units).

Therefore, the sampling plan is a "cluster sample", each cluster corresponding to the set of establishments (stores) belonging to a given sampled enterprise.

The Retail Outlets Survey consists of two samples: a main sample and an additional sample. The main sample provides similar information to the Retail Outlets Survey of 2004. The additional sample supplements the main sample to increase the survey coverage of the population of establishments being part of retail network.

The sample of commercial enterprises consists of:

- A first sub-sample of enterprises owning from 2 to 39 shops. This first sub-sample consists of 8,166 enterprises. The sampling plan is stratified according to the enterprise's main business activity and the number of shops. For some small-sized strata, the collection was exhaustive. Then, an allocation proportionnal to the number of firms in each major geographical zone (see the French zoning in urban area) was carried out. A negative coordination of the sample with the ESA 2009 survey was also applied.

- A second sub-sample of single-establishment enterprises. This sub-sample consists of 11,862 enterprises. The sampling plan is stratified by business sector and number of shops. For some small-sized strata, the collection was exhaustive. Again, an allocation proportionnal to the number of firms in each major geographical zone was carried out, and a positive sample coordination with the ESA 2009 survey was applied: 2,885 enterprises having already been surveyed in the ESA were not surveyed it in the Retail Outlets Survey. Only the variable of membership of a network is not available in the ESA ; it was therefore treated as partial non-response. 8,977 single-establishment enterprises were thus actually surveyed in The Retail Outlets Survey.

- An exhaustive set of enterprises owning 40 shops or more (196 enterprises).

The total population from which the sample is drawn consists of 301,380 enterprises (representing 373,114 shops). The sample consists of 20,224 enterprises among which 17,339 were actually surveyed.

The additional sample consists of legal units owning shops belonging to a network. These legal units were surveyed according to a simple random sampling (the sample is not designed to be representative of the population of legal units owning shops being member of a retail network. Overall, 3,247 enterprises were surveyed to extend the possibilities of analysis of the retail outlets being member of a retail network.