Hi All,

I moved from USA(Chicago) to Australia. I would want to get some information from people in this group who can suggest on the retail chains in Australia, in comparison to USA.

I aam a big time buyer of stuffs from the following retail giants in USA, would be great if some one can suggest its EQUIVALENT in Australia.

1. Walmart -
2. Costco -
3. Best Buy -
4. Dollar Tree -

There's a Costco in Australia. There's Bunnings/Masters for your gardening needs. There's Target, Big W, KMart, Aldi, Woolworths, Coles for everyday shopping.

Unfortunately, shopping in Oz is crap compared to the USA.

I'd go a step further and say it's the crappiest in the English speaking world.

Basically it's shit here. Sorry pal. Best to move back to US.

Crap in what sense? The product we get in Aus is not worth its money or you dont get at all ?!?!?!

Costco in Melbourne is out near Harbour City in the Docklands adjacent to the observation wheel. It's only been there a few years. They are also in Canberra and Sydney and another one planned in the outer east of Melbourne sometime in the future and Sydney as well.

Generally, with a much smaller population and far less dense, Australia does not have mega shopping malls and outlets quite to the extent that the USA does. There are certainly very large shopping centres all over the suburbs, especially Westfield and Centro owned ones and huge warehouse style stores like Bunnings hardware but the USA is far more developed in this regard.

Yeah but the Costco here is Australian brands/prices Costco, not same as UK, or US.

Other than Costco, How about the other shops I mentioned?? I mean do they have their equivalent there in terms of cost/ quality???

As others have said, shopping here is not that same as North America. It's much more expensive and much less variety.

It's a simple function of population size. USA has a huge population with a whole heap of large cities and towns and densely populated over very large areas.

Australia has a small population, only around one fifteenth the population of the US, only a handful of large cities and much lower density than the USA generally. It follows that the shopping centres are smaller, open fewer hours, fewer businesses competing with each other and carry less products and range than in the US simply because the population isn't large enough to really demand it.

Having said all that, you can still readily purchase a wide range of all kinds of products in Australia, typical of a first world country, and people here get by just fine.

No we don't all get by just fine I do MOST of my clothes shopping online from UK, and books and other shit via Amazon. My hubby buys a helluva lot of stuff from the US too.

Yes its like South America without the variety

one of the crappiest in the world. i've shopped in some Asian cities an they are waaaaaay better!

Where to begin?

As a start I'd say:

Pretty much our first port of call for any non-food items (where we have no choice but to be ripped off) is online shopping in the UK, US and Asia.

I know lots of aussies who buy online from M&S now, and not because they lived there for a while and discovered the joys of M&S, but because they know Brits and have been introduced.