Retail Trade, Consumption, and the Construction of Markets

Abstract

A couple of decades ago, it was easy to complain about the lack of historical studies regarding retailing and consumption (Benson & Shaw, 1992; Strasser, McGovern, & Judt, 1998). Today, this is definitely not the case. To produce an overview of the developments in the two fields over the last 20-30 years is an enormous undertaking. However, it should be noted that while consumer and consumption history have matured in recent years to the point where it is relevant and possible to publish major overviews (Trentmann, 2012, 2016), this is less so when it comes to retailing history. One possible reason for this difference is the fact that the organisation of retailing and wholesaling is permeated by national characteristics, not the least institutional differences; meanwhile, the character of consumption and consumer society, at least in the last century and in the Western World, has many common features. One aspect is, of course, the Americanisation of consumption ideals. This is not to say that the general development of the retail sector differs much when viewed over a longer period. All types of retail formats and practices, from specialised stores with lavish shop windows and servile manual service to e-commerce, have at some point in time been adopted and developed in all countries around the world. However, the introduction and relative importance of the different aspects of the retail sector have differed between countries and between urban and rural settings. The present special issue of Scandinavian Economic History Review is based on an open CFP on 'Retail Trade, Consumption, and the Construction of Markets from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries'. We, the guest editors, are grateful that the editorial team of SEHR has given scholars doing research on these subjects the opportunity to present their results in this way. We have, in different capacities, been involved in organising workshops on the Evolution of the Retail Trade in the Twentieth Century. One in Paris in 2015 and one in Uppsala in 2016. The main reason for organising these two workshops was a feeling that there was a need for more research on twentieth-century retail history; another motivation was to gather scholars from different countries in order to create a discussion of similarities and differences in the development of retailing and its final destination, consumption. The outcomes of these workshops have been gratifying. A number of papers from the first workshop will feature in a special issue of Business History on 'New perspectives on 20th century European retailing' in the near future. Some of them are already available online (

The historical evolution of the Greek retail trade: a first overview of its organisational-functional and spatial restructuring

“…The history of retailing has become an area of an increasing scholarly interest over the last few decades (see inter alia Alexander & Akehurst, 1998;Findlay & Sparks, 2002;Deutsch, 2010;Stobart & Howard, 2018;Scott & Fridenson, 2018) with publications mainly focusing on the national historiography of retail and wholesaling (Jacques & Sandgren, 2018). In this vein, Alexander (2010) assesses the evolution of the British retail market during the twentieth century, while Alexander and Doherty (2022) take an institutional view of the historical shaping of retailing in Britain.…”

The Future of Luxury Brands

“…Similarly, to Barnett, Cloke, Clarke, and Malpass (2005), although PCs partly follow universal communication styles to con-vey ethical choices, they are always recontextualized in local realities. Scholars, however, have focused on how PC is expressed in Italy (Lekakis and Forno 2019), how it is articulated in retail contexts (Jacques and Sandgren 2018), and how it is contextualized within jewelry stores.…”