The study examines retail outlets attributes of proximity, price, quality, product variety; promotional offers, etc., to determine which attributes have the greatest impact on customer preference in purchasing food and grocery of organised and unorganised retail outlets. The authors conducted a study for the sample size of 100 customers in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India (50 from each sector) and 50 managers were approached and conducted interview schedule to find the reasons and expectations of customers preferring the particular retail outlet. The findings of the study are family size is the better predictor for purchasing grocery in particular store as compared to family income. The best combination of store preferred by the customer is main street location, less than 500 square feet and II generation store. The authors used weighted average method to find out the best and least attribute to select a particular retail outlet.