THE ROLE AND STRUCTURE OF DISTRIBUTION: PART 1 : MARKETING STRATEGIES

By international standards, British retailers are relatively efficient. However, their performance could be threatened both by the present recession and by the growing complexity of central and local planning and regulations. Neither is the economic role of retailing in terms of marketing adequately understood by central and local government, nor its social role in the infra‐structure of community services. In this important paper, originally prepared for the Distributive Trades EDC, Jan de Somogyi recommends, amongst other things, that there should be a positive national policy towards retailing, and co‐ordination between government departments implementing it; that national strategies to restructure manufacturing industry must not be at the expense of efficient marketing; that the right kind of capital investment in retailing should be encouraged; and that development planning should be speeded up. This first part of the paper deals with marketing strategies; the second will discuss the social infra‐structure.