store: The Development of Retail Stores

The earliest form of retail merchandising was probably the exchange of food and weapons; later came traders and peddlers, and by 3000 b.c. shops had become common. During the Greek and Roman period, stores, including many specialty shops, developed in the form of open booths, attracting large cosmopolitan crowds. After the decline of the Roman Empire, barter became more important, but by the 14th cent. retail trade again assumed importance. Merchants, who in early times were viewed with suspicion, rose in the social scale. Small stores, each carrying its special line of goods, reached their peak in the 18th cent. The wholesale business developed, and traveling salesmen and standard prices came into general use.

In the United States the general store preceded the single-line store and is still common in small rural communities. In the late 19th cent. the department store came into being—a large-scale general store or a combination of single-line stores in which each line of merchandise is operated as a separate department. Such stores provide the convenience of easy accessibility to a large variety of goods. Modern department stores have been vital to the development of shopping centers and malls, huge retail developments that contain a wide variety of stores and services.

Retail concerns that do business principally through the mail are called mail-order houses. In the United States among the first and largest were Montgomery Ward (founded 1872) and Sears, Roebuck, & Company (founded 1886), which sold their goods to rural residents by means of annual catalogs. Both later developed warehouses and retail stores in many urban communities; Montgomery Ward closed in 2001, and Sears was merged with Kmart to become a subsidiary of the Sears Holdings Corporation in 2005. Many mail-order houses now also depend on orders placed over the telephone and via the Internet. Development of the World Wide Web on the Internet has given rise to companies, such as Amazon.com, that sell goods exclusively through an Internet site, or on-line “store,” shipping purchases by mail or other carriers.

Chain stores, though known in earlier times, first developed their modern form in 1859, when the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) standardized the quality and price of all merchandise sold in its stores. Through central management, quantity purchasing, standardization of business methods, and limited individual service, the chains are often able to sell their goods well below prices charged by independent stores. Chain stores were once typified by five-and-ten-cent stores (e.g., F. W. Woolworth Company, which operated such stores until 1998), but the most common forms now are discount superstores (e.g., Wal-Mart; see Walton, Sam), bakeries, tobacco stores, drugstores, groceries, and department stores.

Consumers' cooperative stores (see cooperative movement) have been established in Europe and the United States. Discounting merchandise became widespread after World War II, and stores specializing in discounted merchandise have become the fastest growing segment of the retail industry. The discount, or warehouse, club, where shoppers must pay a fee to become members and name-brand products are sold at a discount (often packaged in multiples or very large containers), became popular in the 1990s. Since the late 1990s, e-commerce conducted by computer or smartphone has become an increasing competitor to retail stores of all sorts, accounting for more than 8% of all retail sales.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• The Development of Retail Stores
• Bibliography

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