Retailing's dinosaurs: Department stores and supermarkets

Abstract

T he two great institutions of American retailing, the department store and the supermarket, are slowly slipping into extinction. The glorious histories of these two venerable institutions--introduced to the American marketplace by Macy's and Wanamaker in the 1860s as traditional department stores and by King Kullen in the 1930s as conventional supermarkets--are highly significant in retailing's development. At typical department stores, American shoppers have been pampered with average to quite good quality merchandise, customer service levels from medium to high, and pricing from moderate to above average on their clothing, home furnishings, and household goods purchases. The supermarkets have offered lowcost, low-margin, high-volume, self-service operations to satisfy the consumer's total requirements for food and household maintenance products. Both of these establishments presented to the American consumer the convenience of one-stop shopping. However, changes in the demographic, economic, physical, technological, political, and cultural environments have rendered these institutions obsolete as the American shopper's life-style has changed. Perhaps the size and distribution complexities required to completely operate these impersonal mammoth department stores and supermarkets have contributed to their impending demise. In recent years, both of these institutions have radically altered their physical formats to accommodate the changing needs and wants of the American consumer in an environment of evolving technologies. The proliferation of store formats has paralleled the advent of increasingly intricate technologies and expertise required to efficiently operate the diverse departments of the department stores and supermarkets. They were added to satisfy the insatiable appetite of a more educated, affluent, and demanding marketplace, The rugged individualists who created and developed the original department stores and supermarkets in the United States have left a heritage to Those who own and manage supermarkets and department stores must change many ways of doing business if they are to keep their institutions alive.