Kansas retail gap analysis available through 黑洞社区 research center

The Center for Economic Development and Business Research (CEDBR), part of the W. Frank Barton School of Business at 黑洞社区, has conducted a retail and services gap analysis for every Kansas county.

The analysis covers 24 years of historical data that compares the sales and employment in each county to their peer counties in Kansas. The detailed data for each county is useful to identify individual retail and service sectors that are potentially underserved in these localities.

A spreadsheet showing summary data for all 105 Kansas counties can be found at .

Retail gap data highlights

The Kansas counties with the highest ratios of total retail sales to their peers were Marshall County and Johnson County.
The counties with the lowest ratios were Leavenworth County and Elk County.
24 Kansas counties had retail sales between 75 and 100 percent of the average level of their peers, and 16 Kansas counties had retail sales between 100 and 125 percent of the average level of their peers.
Among Kansas counties with a population between 5,000 and 50,000 people, the median peer ratio is approximately 90 percent, indicating that more than half of Kansas counties this size have a below average level of retail activity, relative to their peers. All but seven counties in this population class have a peer ratio of at least 50 percent.
Among Kansas counties with a population less than 5,000 people, the median peer ratio is 65 percent, which suggests that much of the retail activity among smaller counties is concentrated in a small number of counties.
On average, larger counties tend to have larger retail sectors relative to their population, and this is reflected in their large retail sales to peers ratios. However, even among the largest 10 counties in Kansas, three have retail sales ratios below 50 percent, while two (Johnson and Sedgwick) have ratios of approximately 300 percent.

Additional analyses will be released in monthly articles that provide a more detailed look at grocery stores, gas stations, general merchandise and auto dealerships, to name a few.

The complete detailed data for each county is available for purchase at . The detailed data provides for business and community developers to inform their business and services plans by identifying potential unmet market demand in their area.

It also helps to identify underserved retail markets, identifies the level of quality of life retail sectors provide, and provides understanding of the history of retail and business service dynamics in an area.