Given the growth and increasing importance of the retail sector over the last decades it has become more and more important to understand which factors affect regional sales levels. A thriving retail environment does not only imply profit generation for the industry itself, but also improves a region’s attractiveness and the inhabitant’s quality of life. Consequently, differences in the degree of retailing among regions can be a source for regional economic disparity. Employing a cross-section study for the year 2005, this study assesses factors that influence regional variations in nondurable, durable and total retail turnover in Sweden. Regional data are used for this assessment. No similar European study has been found among earlier research. Influencing factors are found to vary with the retail product group studied. However, actual and relative market size, employment, demography and store density within a region turns out to be important explanatory variables. Although, the two major contributions of this paper is the significant relationship found between regional sales levels and sector variety and the impact on turnover by the location of different types of shopping centres; variables not included in earlier studies.