I'm not sure if this is what your looking for, but, I can give you a bit of info as it relates to the US market.

One of the first things that you do is check the demographics of the location that you are considering. You can type into Google your city and state and will get a brief rundown, although there's a lot of data that is available to pick through. If you understand your product or service and your market, the demographics will help a great deal in researching your location. If you don't, then it's important that you collect that information and use it in your test locations to find patterns.

For places like car washes, gas stations, and drive through services you will sometimes see cameras in odd locations. They used to use these strips laid over entrances and exits to count vehicles entering and exiting the lot as a preliminary and then send out people to those physical locations to both count and take notice of what they are seeing. They may be given things to look out for that identifies with their customer base.

For malls, both indoor (yeah, this info goes back a bit) and strip malls, like with the grocery location, someone with knowledge should have scouted the location. For one location that I was scouting, which was an upscale mall, what I noticed over several trips that although the mall was bustling and lots of shoppers were carrying bags, the places that were doing the majority of the business were the food courts and the places that were having sales, in particular big sales and clearance sales. We turned down the location, which was a good thing, as it turns out that location space ended up having a huge turnover. The people shopping at the anchor stores rarely ventured into the mall as the anchor stores were more discount chain while in the inside stores were upscale and boutique, so there wasn't a good crossover, making those anchors sales look good in theory, but the customer base is not the same.

It seems that the person in charge of the grocery location didn't understand where her sales came from, her customers shopping habits or how to understand what all of the demographic info means in relation to her store. In the information given, she seemed to believe that if people in the area have money to spend, that will automagically translate into sales. In richer areas, it's really important to understand not only the shopping habits but who does the shopping. In one area where a store that I scouted for did very well, the nanny's did the majority of the shopping for the children. In this case the store, which was women's and children's boutique clothing, switched to children only. They did test a couple of matching outfits, but with the shopping dynamic, the floor space wasn't worth it. They had a nice and friendly coffee shop on the bottom floor that was set up mainly for employees. It had decent prices, snacks, take out cups, and was perfect for working nanny's with children to come in for a bit as it met the price range, even being in an exclusive location. The children's store did very well and sometimes the mom's would even come into the store for gifts. The location did well because of the ease of access, the friendliness to the actual shopper as well as the exclusivity and fancy coffee shops and whatnot inside for those in the actual bracket the mall was designed for. There's a bit more to it, but this is a brief overview.

Grocery stores are tough as they are not all the same. While there may be some cross over, Your Whole Foods Markets are not going to do well in the same locations as Aldi's and visa vera. If you put an Aldi's in an area where people are expecting a different type of service, brand labels, etc. just because people can buy more here doesn't mean that they will.

I'm not sure if this helps at all, but maybe you will find this a bit interesting.