The Decline of the Traditional American Department Store

Abstract

Over the past five years, retailing in the United States has been going through many changes. As a result of these changes the traditional American department store, as an insititution, has been steadily on the decline. We provide an explanation for this devline by focusing on environmental factors an ordganizational changes. Environmental factors include changing consumer attitudes toward mass marketing, demographic changes forcing a suburban as opposed to urban focus, competition and overstoring, and new store social class distinctions. Organizational changes include the introduction of "Just-In-Time" (JIT) as a retail concept, a "trading up" in the merchandise mix, declinging customer services, the increased cost of reaching customers, maintenance of high gross margins, the move from local to regional to national presence, expansion leading to a loss of operational control, and the erosion of consumer trust in the institution.