The retail sector is an integral part of a national economy. From the political economy perspective, all consumer goods have surplus values locked up in them; the surplus values are not realized until the consumer goods are purchased by consumers through various distribution channels. As such, retailing is the essential link between production and consumption. The success of a retail business depends on two general factors: the location of the retail outlet, and management of the business. Both factors are equally important. If the business is located in the wrong place with the wrong customer base, it will not generate expected sales. Similarly, if the business is poorly managed and operated, it will not perform well even if the location is right. Influenced by both traditional and new location theories, Retail Geography is conceptualized and organized using the retail planning process as the framework. The technical and methodological chapters help guide the reader with detailed descriptions of the techniques and are supported with practical examples to reflect the latest software development. Retail Geography provides a state-of-the-art summary and will act as a core textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of economic geography interested in specializing in retail and business geography. The practical examples also make it a valuable handbook for practitioners in the field, as well as students of retail management and commercial real estate management.

Retail history is a rich, cross-disciplinary field that demonstrates the centrality of retailing to many aspects of human experience, from the provisioning of everyday goods to the shaping of urban environments; from earning a living to the construction of identity. Over the last few decades, interest in the history of retail has increased greatly, spanning centuries, extending to all areas of the globe, and drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives. By offering an up-to-date, comprehensive thematic, spatial and chronological coverage of the history of retailing, this Companion goes beyond traditional narratives that are too simplistic and Euro-centric and offers a vibrant survey of this field. It is divided into four broad sections: 1) Contexts, 2) Spaces and places, 3) People, processes and practices and 4) Geographical variations. Chapters are written in an analytical and synthetic manner, accessible to the general reader as well as challenging for specialists, and with an international perspective. This volume is an important resource to a wide range of readers, including marketing and management specialists, historians, geographers, economists, sociologists and urban planners.

The retail sector is an integral part of a national economy. From the political economy perspective, all consumer goods have surplus values locked up in them; the surplus values are not realized until the consumer goods are purchased by consumers through various distribution channels. As such, retailing is the essential link between production and consumption. The success of a retail business depends on two general factors: the location of the retail outlet, and management of the business. Both factors are equally important. If the business is located in the wrong place with the wrong customer base, it will not generate expected sales. Similarly, if the business is poorly managed and operated, it will not perform well even if the location is right. Influenced by both traditional and new location theories, Retail Geography is conceptualized and organized using the retail planning process as the framework. The technical and methodological chapters help guide the reader with detailed descriptions of the techniques and are supported with practical examples to reflect the latest software development. Retail Geography provides a state-of-the-art summary and will act as a core textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of economic geography interested in specializing in retail and business geography. The practical examples also make it a valuable handbook for practitioners in the field, as well as students of retail management and commercial real estate management.

Retail is going through difficult times and is suffering the consequences of both the economic crisis and the digitization of society. Fundamentally, there is a bigger problem: stores cannot keep up with the changing behavior of customers who are connected 24/7, customers for whom there is no distinction between online and offline.The End of Online Shopping: The Future of New Retail in an Always Connected World describes how the smart, the sharing, the circular, and the platform economy are shaping a new era of always connected retail. Retailers urgently need to innovate if they want to stay relevant in a world dominated by marketplaces and sharing platforms. The book contains inspiring examples from different industries - which include the usual suspects such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Google, but also local startups - and covers all aspects of the customer journey, from orientation and selection to delivery.The End of Online Shopping provides an excellent overview of shopping trends and developments worldwide, and offers readers indispensable insights into the future of retail.

Amazon - one of the world's most valuable companies - is worth more than Walmart, Netflix, Target, Nike and Costco combined. What are the secrets to its success? How can these insights be applied to other businesses in the e-commerce sector? The retail industry is facing unprecedented challenges. Across all sectors and markets, retailers are shifting their business models and customer engagement strategies to ensure they survive. Amazon offers unique insight into the company's persistent dissatisfaction with the status quo and innovation and how it has fundamentally changed the ways in which we shop. This fully updated second edition explores Amazon's response to the coronavirus pandemic, the convergence of physical and digital retail, e-commerce economics and sustainability, as well as future policy implications. Written by industry-leading retail analysts and with the first edition now translated into more than a dozen languages, Amazon is an invaluable resource for discovering the lessons that can be learned from the company's unprecedented rise to dominance.

Wal-Mart is America's largest retailer. The national chain of stores is a powerful stand-in of both the promise and perils of free market capitalism. Yet it is also often the target of public outcry for its labor practices, to say nothing of class-action lawsuits, and a central symbol in America's increasingly polarized political discourse over consumption, capitalism and government regulations. In many ways the battle over Wal-Mart is the battle between "Main Street" and "Wall Street" as the fate of workers under globalization and the ability of the private market to effectively distribute precious goods like health care take center stage. In Wal-Mart Wars, Rebekah Massengill shows that the economic debates are not about dollars and cents, but instead represent a conflict over the deployment of deeper symbolic ideas about freedom, community, family, and citizenship. Wal-Mart Wars argues that the family is not just a culture wars issue to be debated with regard to same-sex marriage or the limits of abortion rights; rather, the family is also an idea that shapes the ways in which both conservative and progressive activists talk about economic issues, and in the process, construct different moral frameworks for evaluating capitalism and its most troubling inequalities. With particular attention to political activism and the role of big business to the overall economy, Massengill shows that the fight over the practices of this multi-billion dollar corporation can provide us with important insight into the dreams and realities of American capitalism.

Examining street vending as a global, urban, and informalized practice found both in the Global North and Global South, this volume presents contributions from international scholars working in cities as diverse as Berlin, Dhaka, New York City, Los Angeles, Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. The aim of this global approach is to repudiate the assumption that street vending is usually carried out in the Southern hemisphere and to reveal how it also represents an essential-and constantly growing-economic practice in urban centers of the Global North. Although street vending activities vary due to local specificities, this anthology illustrates how these urban practices can also reveal global ties and developments.

Originally published in 1990, Urban Markets looks at how the informal sector of the economy should be encouraged to assist in the alleviation of problems of poverty and unemployment. Despite this rhetoric, few concrete, implementable ways have been developed. This book is concerned with one such potential strategy which the authors consider to be particularly effective: the creation of both built and open markets for very small retailers and wholesalers. Based on experience of observing such markets in several continents, the authors combine a discussion of the theoretical issues surrounding the creation of urban markets with practical hints of how to establish and run them.

This book offers a unique analysis of how our definitions of luxury have changed over the ages, and with that the role and actions of both suppliers and buyers of luxury products. It traces the way luxury was seen as avarice and emblematic of morally corrosive behavior in past societies, to being viewed in more virtuous terms as the inevitable outcome of structural changes that legitimize the acquisition and display of wealth. It examines the origins of the shift from criticism to acceptance, and traces these changes to fundamentally different notions of what constitutes the basis for social order. Whereas pre-industrial hierarchies cloaked inequality in various secular and sacred guises to mitigate its presence, capitalism justified and reified inequality as a measure of individual success and initiative through interdependent market behavior. The result of this transformation is that status markers have become aspirational tools as hierarchies became porous and self-identity less ascriptive. Correspondingly, as demand for luxury became legitimized, the supply side underwent dramatic changes. Such changes are explored fully in the sectors of fashion, art and wine. As demand for high priced and scarce goods in each of these sectors has increased, in each case key actors have manipulated markets to purposefully either consolidate their pre-eminence or manufacture the requisite scarcity that affords them canonical status. The demand for and supply of luxury goods is now global; consumers seeking validation and affirmation of their status whilst producers engineer scarcity. Luxury is seen not only as good; it is virtuous, its demand possibly insatiable and extremely profitable.

* An essential resource for original business ideas, strategy and branding * How a single store grew into a $30-billion global market-leader * 100 per cent equity retained since the company was founded * Includes the IKEA briefing given to top management * The only warts-and-all view by a C-suite insider and right-hand man of its founder IKEA-branded products are bought all over the world - from the Americas to the Far East. This is the only book to tell from the inside with candour the IKEA story and how one man created its astonishing success from a modest furniture store in rural Sweden. Remarkably, the founding family still holds all of IKEA's shares. Its unorthodox business philosophy has proven so successful that IKEA's meteoric expansion continues to be financed from the company's cash flow only. Without attracting public scrutiny, its founder became the richest man in the world while making IKEA a unique phenomenon among fast-growing businesses.

Enter the glamorous domain of world-famous jewellery house, Harry Winston, and discover the true rags-to-riches story of the immigrant family behind the phenomenon. Harry Winston’s famous slogan for his success was: “knowledge, courage, and the ability to finance.” King of Diamonds: The Flawless World of Harry Winston is the quintessential rags-to-riches success story of a very poor immigrant family emigrating from Ukraine to America. It is the story of how one man, Harry Winston, created a famous name with his company, founded in New York City in 1932. Winston became known for the owning and sales of very large diamonds. At one point, he owned a third of the world’s most famous gems, including the Hope Diamond, which earned him the moniker “King of Diamonds.” The book details how author Ronald Winston’s father got his start and began what would eventually become the most famous jewellery house in the world. Peek inside his first office, an upstairs Fifth Ave location, followed by subsequent locations in Rockefeller Centre, an office across from St. Patrick's Cathedral, and finally an image-building store on Fifth Avenue. Known as the “Jewelleer to the Stars,” Winston’s gems have appeared both on the Hollywood red carpet and in famous Hollywood films like Notorious starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, The Graduate starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. Celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Viola Davis, Helen Mirren, Gwyneth Paltrow, and many more have worn Winston pieces on Hollywood’s biggest nights. The story then follows Harry Winston’s successor and heir, Ronald Winston, and his making of the family name. Under Ronald, the company’s name would not remain just famous, but would become world-famous. Ronald built locations in Los Angeles, Hawaii, Japan, and China. Ronald’s saga continued with his entry into the revolution in Angola, buying diamonds from its charismatic leader, Jonas Savimbi. Ronald Winston risked his life in order to make profits that repaid the death taxes caused by his father’s passing. In all, King of Diamonds is a joyous evocation of two men who added an innumerable amount to the image, story, and marketing of luxury products, as well as to the joy of people who love and purchase these objects. After all, as frequent Winston jewellery-wearer Marilyn Monroe would say, “diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

Retail is the essential link between production and consumption. The dynamics of a nation's economy cannot be fully understood without a good understanding of its retail sector. This book is written to achieve three broad objectives. First, it provides a comprehensive assessment of the changes in consumption patterns in China, the current size of the Chinese consumer market, and the regional variations. Second, it presents an interpretation of the changes in the country's regulatory system and the corresponding policy initiatives, including the new state spatial strategies devised after its admission to the WTO. Third, it delivers a systematic analysis of the transformation of China's retail sector. This includes the entry and expansion of foreign retailers, the development of indigenous retail chains as a national strategy to modernize China's retail industry, and the changing retailer-supplier relations. This book is a useful reference not only for university students and faculty researchers, but also for international retailers and commercial real estate developers who contemplate business and investment opportunities in China.

What Does it Take to Be an Online Rockstar JVZoo is an amazing resource for entrepreneurs to turn their knowledge into digital products and recruit hundreds or thousands in their field to promote those products. Whether you are a business consultant, lawyer, real estate agent, or even someone who knows how to build the perfect birdhouse, JVZoo allows you to put your knowledge into a format that can be sold and profited from. While the rest of the world looks for jobs, JVZoo's members create their own. In the three years that JVZoo has been around, it's members have generated over $100 million in sales revenue. Our members are mainly people who started making money online as a part-time venture. Rockstars of JVZoo is a compilation of case studies, written by people just like you, people who listened to their inner voices and created jobs for themselves. Everything you are about to read in this book has been achieved by ordinary people who did that one thing that separates entrepreneurs from the rest of society: they took action.

The emerging present is a fast-changing context for incumbent organizations, especially in market segments where online behavior is replacing physical proximity, and users engage with digital platforms for the acquisition of products and services. These are platforms that allow users to behave, to leave a mark, and to participate in the community of others, which are the values people now seek. Transforming Organizations for the Subscription Economy: Starting from Scratch aims to prepare executives for a world in which everything is social, augmented and autonomous; objects and spaces will have multiple purposes, capabilities and meanings. This is a new territory full of opportunity which is generally discussed only at the level of technology involved instead of the intellectual level, where the real understanding of the need for transformation resides. The book reveals ideas about what is possible if we transform the present. The narrative is organized around what is actual and what is potential; what is the probable future that we can arrive at through change, and what is the possible future that we can build through transformation. When engaging in transformation, the following strategic question develops: if you were designing your organization today, how would you design it? In other words, how would you go about it starting from scratch? This book provides the intellectual framework that empowers organizations to understand and navigate the emerging present, and to develop and deliver products and services of intrinsic value to users.

Markets are at the origin of urban life as places for social, cultural and economic encounter evolving over centuries. Today, they have a particular value as mostly independent, non-corporate and often informal work spaces serving millions of the most vulnerable communities across the world. At the same time, markets have become fashionable destinations for 'foodies' and middle class consumers and tourists looking for authenticity and heritage. The confluence of these potentially contradictory actors and their interests turns markets into "contested spaces". Contested Markets, Contested Cities provides an analytical and multidisciplinary framework within which specific markets from Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Quito, Sofia, Madrid, London and Leeds (UK) are explored. This pioneering and highly original work examines public markets from a perspective of contestation looking at their role in processes of gentrification but also in political mobilisation and urban justice.

China's rise as an economic superpower has been inescapable. Statistical hyperbole has been accompanied by a plethora of highly publicized architectural forms that brand the regeneration of its increasingly globalized urban centres. Despite the sizeable body of literature that has accompanied China's modernization, the essence and trajectory of its contemporary cityscape remains difficult to grasp. This volume addresses a less explored aspect of China's urban rejuvenation - the prominence of the shopping mall as a keystone of its public spaces. Here, the presence of the built form most representative of Western capitalism's excess is one that makes explicit the tensions between China's Communist state and its ascent within the 'free' market. This book examines how these interrelationships are manifested in the culturally hybrid built form of the shopping mall and its role in contesting the 'public' space of the modern Chinese city. By viewing these interrelationships as collisions of global and local narratives, a more nuanced understanding of the shopping mall typology is explored. Much architectural criticism has failed to address the levels of meaning implicit within the shopping mall, yet it is a building type whose public popularity has guaranteed its endurance. Consequently, if architecture is to remain a relevant social art, a more holistic understanding of this phenomenon will be indispensable to the process of adapting to globalizing forces. This examination of Chinese shopping malls offers a timely and relevant case study of what is happening in all our cities today.

Written by marketing experts, this authoritative and comprehensive full-colour textbook made up of both accessible research and theory, real-world examples and case studies including Prada, Gucci and Burberry, provides students with an overview of the global fashion industry and fashion marketing, strategy, branding, communications, retailing and distribution, as well as the psychological factors involved in consuming fashion and luxury. The role of social media, celebrities and influencers such as Kim Kardashian and Lil Miquela are discussed, as is the ever-increasing role of ethical fashion and sustainability. The authors also offer an expanded view of fashion and luxury by moving beyond just clothing and apparel to include other fashionable and luxurious products and services, including technology. Packed with attractive visuals from fashion and culture, and accompanied by chapter summaries, questions and exercises, this textbook is essential reading for students studying fashion, luxury, marketing, management, retailing, branding and communications. Also provided for educators are supporting PowerPoint slides and an instructor's manual to support use of the textbook with students. Suitable for Fashion Marketing/Fashion Consumer Behaviour modules as well as a general text for Fashion Marketing programmes. The text will also appeal to Luxury programmes (MBA etc) and Retail Marketing modules (UG).

The origin of markets is a central issue in economics and economic history, but until now there has been no definitive reference source on the subject. This authoritative collection fills the gap by reprinting key papers analysing the evolution of markets over the past millennium. These papers, written by leading scholars in the field, relate market development to urban growth, the spread of the credit system, and the evolution of capitalism. They show that markets did not evolve in a purely spontaneous fashion, but as part of the planned development of market centres by local landowners and business people. This volume, with an original introduction by the editor, will serve as an excellent reference tool to students, academics and practitioners interested in the broad field of economics and economic history, and market evolution in particular.

'Business Development in Licensed Retailing: a unit manager's guide' details the indispensable skills and techniques needed to manage units within licensed retail organisations in a flexible and entrepreneurial manner. This book: * Forms the basis of a complete course for a unit manager's development. * Provides an overview of the range of skills needed for effective unit management. * Supports the development of techniques with examples from existing best practice and case examples from companies such as JD Wetherspoon's, TGI Fridays and McDonald's amongst others. Business Development in Licensed Retailing considers the functional management techniques required at unit management level, covering recruitment, human resource management, operations, service quality and customer relations, financial measurement and analysis, promotions and strategic planning. The analysis systematically provides all the practical know-how you need to produce of a comprehensive business plan for your unit. Ending with a comprehensive case study that demonstrates all the aspects of business development working in a real-life scenario, the text is ideally suited for lecturers and management development personnel to use as a learning resource through which readers can apply the principles and techniques outlined.

The late twentieth century saw rapid growth in consumption and the expansion of retailing and services. This was reflected in the number and type of stores and locations, from regional shopping malls and out-of-town superstores to concept and flagship stores. Retail design became an essential part of its success by creating distinctive brands and formats. However, the economic recession in the developed world and competition for consumer goods from the developing world has led to a re-assessment of the growth-led conventions of the retail industry. In addition, the rapid advance of e-commerce and online shopping has created new challenges for physical stores and the communication and distribution of retail brands. The book will provide students, researchers and practitioners a detailed assessment of retail design, taking a distinctive global approach to place design practice and theory in context. Chapters are devoted to key issues in the visual and structural contribution of design to retail brands and format development, and to the role of design in communication. In the course of the book, the authors engage with problems of convergence between retailing and other services and between the physical and virtual worlds, and also changing patterns of use, re-use and ownership of retail spaces and buildings. Retail Design concerns designers and organisations but also defines its broader contribution to society, culture and economy.

Featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Vox, The Shopping Revolution is "a brisk and thought-provoking anatomy of shopping in the 21st century" (Kirkus Reviews). The retail industry was already in the midst of unparalleled disruption. Then came COVID-19. In a fully updated and expanded edition of The Shopping Revolution: How Retailers Succeed in an Era of Endless Disruption Accelerated by COVID-19, Wharton professor Barbara E. Kahn, a foremost retail expert, examines the companies that have been most successful during a tsunami of change in the industry. She offers fresh insights into what we can learn from these companies' ascendance and continued transformation in the face of unprecedented challenges. Kahn, also the author of Global Brand Power: Leveraging Branding for Long-Term Growth, examines:In a brand-new chapter, how companies in China, like Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have changed the game;How Amazon became the retailer of choice for a large portion of the US population, and how other companies have chosen to work with them or have to compete against them; How Walmart beat out other grocers in the late 1990s to become the leader in food retailing, and how they must pivot to hold their leadership position today; How Warby Parker dared to compete against Luxottica in the lucrative eyewear business, and what that can tell start-ups about how to carve out a niche against a Goliath; How Sephora drew away customers from once-dominant department stores to become the go-to retailers for beauty products. Kahn argues we are just witnessing the start of the radical changes in retail that have been hastened by the pandemic and will revolutionize shopping in every way. Building on these insights, Kahn offers a framework that any company can use to create a competitive strategy to survive and thrive in today's-and tomorrow's-retail environment.

In this pioneering study of the development of the Asian department store, economists, anthropologists and historians examine various aspects of retailing, business organization, networking and consumerism in the expanding economies of Asia.

This book, which is a mixture of fact, anecdote and quotation, describes the author's meandering exploration of some of the best of England's provincial second-hand bookshops, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to the Isles of Scilly. Judged by the contents of the author's bookshelves, he has a strong but highly selective interest in sport, with rugby union, cricket and bowls foremost, and the odd place allowed to football and golf. There are biographies and autobiographies from Bernard Shaw to Alan Ross; a dozen volumes by W H Hudson, greatest of naturalists; travels with Henry James and Paul Theroux and Edwin Muir; books on cinema Westerns; essays by Ford Madox Ford and Edward Thomas; a novel or two; and a little poetry. The bulk of these books, as you may notice, are dependent, to a greater or lesser extent, on fact, suggesting, correctly, that their owner is a journalist.

Anticipating that marketing will experience a strategic change in the new normal post COVID-19, this book sets out to capture interesting insights from researchers and practitioners through in-depth research on the myriad aspects of industrial transformation. It discusses the facets in which markets can be reached sustainably delivering value to people, planet and create prosperity. Sustainable Marketing and Customer Value establishes an overview and framework for major ideas that connect marketing, consumption and sustainability. It addresses dominant areas of research of sustainability from the marketing perspective, the origin of interest in sustainability, as well as the practice of deprioritising sustainability ideas in pursuit of short-term business goals. Research scholars and business students will find this book of primary relevance, but it is also written for marketing academics and professionals, especially those in large corporations.