M.Com. (Business Management) / With the coming of deregulation, many service station operators and oil companies have had high expectations from convenience stores. They saw it as an extra revenue stream. The reality is proving much tougher. To be successful one has to have the right location, external image and internal layout. Unfortunately very few oil companies went about setting up their convenience store franchises in accordance with franchise disciplines in the first place. Many of them insufficiently developed their pilot operations and set up as many shops in as short a time as possible, with proliferation of their convenience stores as the driving force. The idea at the time was to capture as big a share of the market as was possible, before competition moved in. In many of these stores there was a lack of research into the target market, there was insufficient training and information for the dealers/operators and product range was haphazard. These problems themselves were exacerbated as the number of stores grew. The objective of this study is to analyse TOTAL's convenience store location decision making process, external image and internal layout.