Local shopping is a topic that has been neglected for many years by both retail researchers and policy makers. However, in recent years it has come on to the agenda again, mainly because a number of government policy areas – including social exclusion, regeneration and sector competitiveness – have recognised the vital community role played by small shops, and the problems of maintaining their vitality and viability. Within that context, introduces the special issue of IJRDM which presents a number of papers on the general theme of retailing for communities that were given at the CIRM Conference held in Manchester on 13 September 2002. They fall into three main groups: local shopping areas; business strategy and operations; and, learning, training and support for small retailers. The papers illustrate the diversity of research that needs to be undertaken in this area, and there are close parallels with work being undertaken in other management and social science disciplines.
Until very recently local shopping has been very much the Cinderella of retail studies and planning, something used most days by most people – even if just to pick up a newspaper on the way to work – and taken very much for granted as a consequence. It has “always been there”, neither glamorous nor exciting, and therefore something that has been largely ignored while over the past 30 years or so the retail landscape was being transformed with successive phases of new formats preoccupying the attention of consumers, retailers, developers and planners. More recently, in the last decade, retail internationalisation has started to take place on a large scale, and with it the emergence of the first global retailers, while in the early years of the new century the potential of e‐retailing is of growing interest. With all these changes has come the growth of national retail chains that have come to dominate their sectors, and the emergence of much more complex patterns of shopping behaviours in a post‐modern society where people are increasingly defined by what, how, when and where they consume.
The scale, speed and novelty of all these changes has meant academic researchers with an interest in retailing have inevitably focused much of their attention on monitoring, understanding and evaluating them, and in this respect it is telling that the large major study of small scale retailing in the UK was made over 25 years ago (Dawson and Kirby, 1979). Where local shopping has been considered, it seems mainly to have been within the context of work on the impact of large developments, not least grocery superstores, which have often been regarded as the main factor in the decline of smaller centres. Such interpretations can be rather too simplistic, however, and changes in local shopping provision can be related just as much to macro‐environmental changes in society and economy, as well as to structural changes in particular sectors such as banking and electrical goods. Any sense of permanence and stability in local centres is very misleading as there has been (and continues to be) much change and churn of businesses, suggesting that shortfalls in the entrepreneurial and management skills of many small retailers is another important part of the equation (Bennison and Jones, 2002).
The need to gain a better understanding of issues facing local shopping and small retailers has become more urgent since 1997 and the election of New Labour. In the past six years several major areas of government policy have come together to ignite a revival of interest in the topic since retail provision has been recognised as a vital element in the physical, social and economic health of local communities: the principal agendas are those of social exclusion, regeneration and sector competitiveness, although in other areas too – not least countryside policy – the role of small retailers has been recognised. At the same time the large grocery retailers have become active in local shopping with the development of small formats such as Sainsburys Local, and Marks & Spencer’s Simply Food, while Tesco’s acquisition of the T & S convenience chain in 2002 must be seen as a serious declaration of intent.
As in several other universities with retail interests, the “rediscovery” of the small shop and local retailing as a policy and research issue has been reflected in the activities of the Retail Management Group at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, where it now very much complements long established work and involvement with corporate retailing. Of greatest significance has been the establishment, with EU matched funding, of the Retail Enterprise Network (REN) which is building a partnership of business, academic and governmental organisations to protect and promote diversity in the SME retail sector.
The work of REN was reflected in the choice of theme for the Contemporary Issues in Retail Marketing (CIRM) Conference held on 13 September 2002 – “Retailing for Communities: issues of inclusion and exclusion”. The conference itself is an annual event at Manchester that started in 1998, and its explicit aim is to bring together academics and practitioners to the mutual benefit of both. The 2002 conference attracted over 80 delegates, and included participants from Brazil, the USA, Europe and Australia, and from a range of backgrounds including academia, retailing, planning and development. This special issue of IJRDM brings together a number of the academic and practitioner contributions presented at the conference. A further two of the papers given at the conference will be published later in the year in a special issue of this journal given over to the theme of “retailing and social exclusion” (edited by Graham Clarke and David Bennison).
The current issue has two main sections: six longer papers, followed by four shorter ones in the Retail Insights section (edited by Adelina Broadbridge). Two of the latter were presented at the conference, and two have been commissioned specifically for this special issue as they provide further perspectives on the overall topic area.
Taken all together, the papers in this issue fall into three main groups.
1. Local shopping areas
There are five papers that provide contrasting perspectives on declining shopping areas, the implications for local communities and the approaches that may be taken to lead to their eventual revival. In a detailed study, Edmund O’ Callaghan and Don O’ Riordan of the Dublin Institute of Technology look at changes over a 30‐year period in the shopping streets that are close to the central retail core of Dublin city centre. They find evidence of a substantial decline in fortune consequent to the suburbanisation of the local population, and few of the businesses found in 1972 were still present in 2002. In their place have come many ethnic stores and a range of other businesses.
The paper by Cliff Guy and Mary Duckett examines the position of small retailers in Adamstown, an inner city community in Cardiff. Again a story of retail decline is revealed. The paper focuses on the views of local traders and residents, and assesses the ways in which the role of the centre as a community centre could be maintained.
Three of the papers in the Insights section fall under this heading as well. Andrew Mitchell and Malcolm Kirkup of Birmingham University look at the role of retail development in urban regeneration, using the example of the run‐down Castle Vale estate in Birmingham where the application of partnership and marketing principles has resulted in a remarkable turnaround in fortune. Here, however, the role of a new large Sainsburys store in retail provision has been pivotal.
A contrasting Midlands perspective is provided by Angela Blair and her colleagues who report on their work in Sandwell in mapping local food provision in part of the town. Their central concern is the impact that limited access to fresh foods has on the physical health of the community, although they also discuss the related issue of the overall social well‐being of the area. A range of potential solutions to the problems is suggested.
Finally, Sophie Hogg, Dominic Medway and Gary Warnaby assess how the North American BIDS approach to the regeneration of town centres – to be introduced in the UK in 2004 – may provide a specific opportunity for SME retailers. They argue that the empowerment of local businesses that it enables will have the potential to strengthen smaller retail districts.
2. Business strategy and operations
A second major theme is represented by two papers that examine aspects of the strategy and operations of two types of retailer that provide important services to local communities: the ethnic convenience store and the charity outlet. In the first of these, Rita Welsh and her colleagues at Queen Margaret University College analyse Pakistani owned convenience stores in Edinburgh, focusing on the business survival strategies that they use in the face of a changing and harsher competitive environment. The strongest businesses have been able to adapt in a wide variety of ways, and while the eventual outcome may be a smaller convenience sector, they argue that it is also a stronger one.
In the second paper Adelina Broadbridge and Liz Parsons of Stirling University examine charity shops, one of the few areas of growth in local shopping provision. With hints of the old Wheel of Retailing theory, they focus on the increasing professionalisation of the sector, and consider the implications for their local operations, identifying concerns that this move may lead to a loss of local links as they appear to move “up‐market” and voluntary helpers are replaced by trained retail staff.
3. Learning, training and support for the small retailer
The final group of papers in this issue examines some of the problems and methods involved in providing learning, training and support for the small retailer. The first of these, by Ruth Schmidt and Cathy Parker of MMU, highlights the barriers to women entering the small retailer sector, and puts forward a research agenda that will form part of the programme of the Retail Enterprise Network. The second paper, by Tony Kent, Charles Dennis and Sue Tanton, provides an interim assessment of a pilot mentoring scheme for SME retailers in the London borough of Merton. They consider whether this is a viable approach to training and development, given that it is mostly associated with large organisations, and discuss the research and practical implications in applying it to small retailers. Thirdly, in the Insights section, Cathy Parker, Tracey Anthony‐Winter and David Tabernacle look at one of the alternatives to mentoring being developed in another London borough – Barnet. This involves work by the local College of Further Education in engaging small retailers in learning and training activities which take place in retail clubs where traders come together to solve common problems with the support of various community stakeholders.
It may be appreciated from this brief overview that the papers in this issue demonstrate the variety and potential richness of research that waits to be done on the retail SME sector and local shopping. In a wider context it is important, however, to recognise that the focus and direction of this research in retailing is mirrored by work in a number of other management and social science disciplines. For example, research in these retail areas cuts across similar debates taking place in the SME and entrepreneurial studies literature relating to a wide variety of issues, including growth, stability, sustainability, gender, learning and development. In the fields of operational and strategic management, research on quality, performance, organisational efficiency and effectiveness, and local and global strategies, inter alia, is all taking place. It is therefore important that these diverse research communities have opportunities for debate and critical argument to engage in varied approaches to the important research questions that have been raised in this issue. Because the discussions have traditionally been limited to academics closely involved in one specific discipline or sub‐discipline, the different voices sometimes end up talking past each other rather than learning from one another.
Academic research is often criticised for being remote and obtuse to practitioner needs and having little to offer to a wider community. A number of Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) reports have been critical of the types of academic research undertaken in the social sciences, and the contribution they are able to make to both practice and policy (ESRC, 2001; DTI, 1993; DTI, 2000; DTI, 2001). The establishment of “thematic priorities” following the criticisms in the 1993 White Paper together with the response to focus on relevance and quality to achieve world‐class social science research has addressed the main criticisms (ESRC, 2001). Recent debates surrounding different modes of research with particular reference to a shift from disciplinary based to transdiciplinary approaches have created new opportunities for researchers to engage with various actors at different levels and to offer a number of different emphases. Mode 1 research problems are set and solved in a context governed by the interests of an academic community within a discipline. In contrast, Mode 2 knowledge production is focused on application. It is intended to be useful to industry, government or society generally as well as the practitioner and academic. Knowledge is produced under continuous “negotiation” and it will not be produced until the interests of the various actors are included.
For research to be of value to a wider community it must therefore be useful, accessible and timely. Real issues, real people and real solutions through the application of systematic research studies are a prerequisite to achieving these objectives. Inclusion and accessibility to the findings from the research are also essential if the research is to make a valued contribution. This is where CIRM and latterly REN have positioned themselves – as a focal point for these types of research activity in retailing to reach a wider audience of academics drawn from across different disciplines, to offer a platform for debate, and to create a longer term research agenda that purposefully includes both practitioners from all parts of the retailing community and policy makers at local, national and trans‐national levels.
After reading this special issue of IJRDM it is hoped that you will feel encouraged and enthused sufficiently to take part in both future CIRM conferences and the Retail Enterprise Network. CIRM 2003 will be held on 12 September on the related theme of neighbourhood retailing, and details can be found at: www.business.mmu.ac.uk/events/confs/cirm2003/index.htm
The Web site of the Retail Enterprise Network is: www.retail‐network.org
The Guest Editors would like to thank the Retail Enterprise Network for its support of the CIRM 2002 Conference, and Professor John Fernie for providing them with the opportunity to put together this special issue. The contents of this article were first presented at the “Contemporary issues in retail marketing” (CIRM) Conference at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK, September, 2002.
