Consumer Convenience and the Retail Structure of Cities

Abstract

This article is based on a Charles Coolidge Parlin Memorial Lecture given under the auspices of the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Marketing Association on May 27, 1958. On that same occasion T. V. Houser, recently retired Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sears, Roebuck and Co., also gave a Parlin Lecture on “The True Role of the Marketing Executive”; and an adaptation of his presentation appears in this same issue of the journal of marketing, pp. 363–369. Professor Cox points out that surveys of what goes on after goods have reached ultimate consumers are wholly inadequate. Yet many things of great importance for marketing take place here. The vaunted American standard of living results in consumers’ clustering their purchases. Therefore, consumer convenience means aggregate convenience—facilitating the collection of an entire standard of living rather than purchase of individual units of particular goods. Cities provide aggregate convenience by crowding people together, but do so economically only when governed by the “principle of efficient congestion.”