SCENARIO FOR CHANGE OR CHAOS?

As the price war surges into the 1980s and battle continues for market share, the pressure on margins has produced the need for further and further cost‐cutting. In this paper (given at a South‐East IGD Branch Seminar late last year), Mr Smeeton outlines the reaction so far of the retail trade to these needs, and then proceeds to establish the distribution network as the last big frontier for cost‐cutting. Humphrey Smeeton has the ability not only to present the larger theoretical questions, but to pay detailed attention to the practical problems of physical distribution management.