The Future of U.S. Retailing: An Agenda for the 21st Century

This book, the result of a symposium co-sponsored by several academic and professional organizations, provides information and insights useful for anyone aspiring to succeed in marketing to consumers in the 1990s. The book is unique in that it blends thoughtful commentaries of distinguished academics with the reasoned perspectives of executives of such firms as J. C. Penney, Avon, and Mary Kay in arriving at an agenda of critical propositions and issues relating to the nature and structure of retailing by the year 2000. What types of retailers will exist in the next century? How many retailers will there be? What will be the relationship between retailing and society? Questions such as these are asked and answered in the book. By focusing on likely trends in traditional retailing, direct marketing, direct selling, and multi-channel distribution networks, and overlaying these trends with the impact of technology and changing consumption patterns, the book provides a set of guidelines for achieving retailing success.

The book identifies the single-most important key to success in the remainder of this century--relationship management. Only by managing relationships between the firm and its customers, between the firm and its employees, and between employees and customers will a firm be able to survive in the 1990s. As the book notes, retail leaders in the next millennium will have learned to respect the lifetime value of both their customers and employees. The book concludes by identifying 25 conditions that will face retailers in the 1990s. These conditions, which range from hypersaturated markets to demographic trends (income polarization, smaller households, educational decline, more working women, time poverty), database marketing, show biz shopping, and concerned customers, are likely to both inhibit and facilitate retailing in the remainder of the century. Hence, the book should be of interest to business academics, business practitioners engaged in, or wanting to be engaged in, marketing to consumers, and anyone interested in the future of retailing from a societal or public policy perspective.