It is beyond doubt that location selection plays a vital role in retailing. Even though the reasons upon which customers base their destination choice are well investigated, there are only few studies considering a retailer's location selection process. Moreover, most of them look either at a subset of location factors or don't examine the perceived relevance to a retailer's location decision. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore in what way retail location factors influence the attractiveness of a prospective site from a retailer's point of view. Therefore, a comprehensive catalogue of relevant location determinants was developed based on a systematic literature review. The final catalogue has been operationalised by drawing on qualitative data from expert interviews in order to implement it in the applied Hierarchical-Individualised-Limit-Conjoint-Analysis (HILCA). Then, a quantitative questionnaire survey was conducted amongst food retailers in the German-speaking area to determine the weight of each factor in location decisions using HILCA. The empirical results provide evidence that other factors besides the well-known (e.g. population density, competition conditions or assumed catchment area) have notable influence on the retailer's location decision. (author's abstract)