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Cornering the Market

By Spellman, Susan V.

Cornering the Market

By Spellman, Susan V.

0 - Default Title
Description
In popular stereotypes, local grocers were avuncular men who spent their days in pickle-barrel conversations and checkers games; they were backward small-town merchants resistant to modernizing impulses. Cornering the Market challenges these conventions to demonstrate that nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century grocers were important but unsung innovators of business models and retail technologies that fostered the rise of contemporary retailing. Small grocery owners revolutionized business practices from the bottom by becoming the first retailers to own and operate cash registers, develop new distribution paths, and engage in transforming the grocery trade from local enterprises to a nationwide industry. Drawing on storekeepers' diaries, business ledgers and documents, and the letters of merchants, wholesalers, traveling men, and consumers, Susan V. Spellman details the remarkable achievements of American small businessmen, and their major contributions to the making of "modern" enterprise in the United States. The development of mass production, distribution, and marketing, the growth of regional and national markets, and the introduction of new organizational and business methods fundamentally changed the structures of American capitalism. Within the walls of their stores, proprietors confronted these changes by crafting solutions centered on notions of efficiency, scale, and price control. Without abandoning local ties, they turned social concepts of community into commercial profitability. It was a powerful combination that businesses from chain stores to Walmart continue to exploit today.
Product details
Edition:
illustrated
Number of Pages:
242
Release Date:
2016-04-12
Publication Date:
2016-04-12
Publisher:
OXFORD UNIV PR
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0199384274
ISBN13:
9780199384273
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
531 g
Height:
161 cm
Width:
240 cm
Thickness:
18 cm
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