Three early 2014 developments signal a new regulatory regime is on the way. The U.S. Department of Justice announced it will not interfere with marijuana retail sales as long as all state and Federal rules are followed and all taxes are paid. The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued formal guidance to U.S. banks on how to do business with marijuana firms. The President of the United States mentioned marijuana and alcohol in the same sentence. An enormous, quasi-dormant underground economy is awakening and large components are coming to the surface. Taylor West, deputy director of the 440-member National Cannabis Industry Association, said, "There is a whole canopy of products that goes beyond plants." He cites cannabis-infused foods and drinks, cannabis oils, butters, tinctures, and salves. New regulatory demands will spark other opportunities such as laboratories to test for impurities and software systems to track product from seed-to-sale. But make no mistake about it: Some investors in some of the publicly-held cannabis-connected companies detailed at www.hempinsiders.com will lose money.

For courses in Retail Management. A contemporary text that helps readers thrive in today's retailing industry Retail Management: A Strategic Approach is built on the fundamental principle that retailers have to plan for and adapt to a complex, changing environment. Without a pre-defined and well-integrated strategy, retailers may flounder and be unable to cope with the environment that surrounds them. This text helps readers become good retail planners and decision makers. The 13th Edition incorporates updated data that reflects the current world economic climate, extensive coverage of omnichannel retailing, and many new vignettes, questions, and cases, so that readers can thrive in today's retailing industry.

This new edition of Contemporary Retail and Marketing Case Studies is a collection of 34 studies of retail and marketing operations as told by individual companies.

Small, medium and larger companies relate the challenges they have faced and how they overcame them, and share their successes and frustrations in a frank and open manner. Each case is unique in its own way and addresses issues which are pertinent and relevant to the South African retail and marketing environment.

The value of this collection is that:

• It provides a variety of cases that together offer insight into the marketing challenges faced by local businesses
• It offers a South African perspective on how to overcome these issues
• It is written from the viewpoint of the entrepreneur or business executive
• It provides practical insights which support work-integrated learning.

This book is a must-read for scholars, students and people concerned with the retail and marketing industry.

Race has long shaped shopping experiences for many Americans. Retail exchanges and establishments have made headlines as flashpoints for conflict not only between blacks and whites, but also between whites, Mexicans, Asian Americans, and a wide variety of other ethnic groups, who have at times found themselves unwelcome at white-owned businesses. Race and Retail documents the extent to which retail establishments, both past and present, have often catered to specific ethnic and racial groups. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the original essays collected here explore selling and buying practices of nonwhite populations around the world and the barriers that shape these habits, such as racial discrimination, food deserts, and gentrification. The contributors highlight more contemporary issues by raising questions about how race informs business owners' ideas about consumer demand, resulting in substandard quality and higher prices for minorities than in predominantly white neighborhoods. In a wide-ranging exploration of the subject, they also address revitalization and gentrification in South Korean and Latino neighborhoods in California, Arab and Turkish coffeehouses and hookah lounges in South Paterson, New Jersey, and tourist capoeira consumption in Brazil. Race and Retail illuminates the complex play of forces at work in racialized retail markets and the everyday impact of those forces on minority consumers. The essays demonstrate how past practice remains in force in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Along with fast-food workers, retail workers are capturing the attention of the public and the media with the Fight for $15. Like fast-food workers, retail workers are underpaid, and fewer than 5 percent of them belong to unions. In Hard Sell, Peter Ikeler traces the low-wage, largely nonunion character of U.S. retail through the history and ultimate failure of twentieth-century retail unionism. He asks pivotal questions about twenty-first-century capitalism: Does the nature of retail work make collective action unlikely? Can working conditions improve in the absence of a union? Is worker consciousness changing in ways that might encourage or further inhibit organizing? Ikeler conducted interviews at New York City locations of two iconic department stores-Macy's and Target. Much of the book's narrative unfolds from the perspectives of these workers in America's most unequal city.When he speaks to workers, Ikeler finds that the Macy's organization displays an adversarial relationship between workers and managers and that Target is infused with a "teamwork" message that enfolds both parties. Macy's workers identify more with their jobs and are more opposed to management, yet Target workers show greater solidarity. Both groups, however, are largely unhappy with the pay and precariousness of their jobs. Combined with workplace-generated feelings of unity and resistance, these grievances provide promising inroads to organizing that could help take the struggle against inequality beyond symbolic action to real economic power.

This book examines the impact and shortcomings of the TRIPS Agreement, which was signed in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994. Over the last 20 years, the framework conditions have changed fundamentally. New technologies have emerged, markets have expanded beyond national borders, some developing states have become global players, the terms of international competition have changed, and the intellectual property system faces increasing friction with public policies. The contributions to this book inquire into whether the TRIPS Agreement should still be seen only as part of an international trade regulation, or whether it needs to be understood - or even reconceptualized - as a framework regulation for the international protection of intellectual property. The purpose, therefore, is not to define the terms of an outright revision of the TRIPS Agreement but rather to discuss the framework conditions for an interpretative evolution that could make the Agreement better suited to the expectations and needs of today's global economy.