Suchergebnisse

Retailing is the marketing institution with which consumers have the most immediate and frequent contact. As such, consumers should be concerned with how the behaviour and performance of retailers will impact on them. While the consumer may not be explicitly aware of it, the rate of return (RoR) on capital invested in retailing has both instantaneous and temporal impacts on consumer well‐being. When the RoR is high, relative to the cost of capital, retail prices are probably higher than they need be. However, this high RoR may persuade other investors (i.e. potential retailers) to enter the market, thereby eventually lowering prices and increasing product availability.

Retail trade, an essential component in any industrialised marketing system, has received relatively little attention on a macro level. Rather, the formal study of retail trade has been directed at helping retail managers improve the effectiveness of their decisions. Although such analysis is helpful to retail managers, it is of less use to government policy makers in formulating policy and to marketing academicians in their attempts to understand retailing on a broader level. If the retailing sector of the economy is to be better understood some major analytical questions which revolve around the productivity of retail trade must be answered. Importantly, the productivity of retail trade is not only of interest to government policy makers but also should be of interest to marketers because (1) the productivity of retailing is a significant component in influencing the cost of marketing goods, (2) as marketers we know almost nothing about the economic efficiency of retailing, and (3) it will give marketers the tools to help compare productivity in the retailing/marketing sectors of the economy to productivity in other sectors of the economy. The purpose of this paper is the estimation of a production function for department stores in the United States for the year 1972. During 1972, department store sales totalled $51·08 billion[l], comprising 11·1% of all retail sales. Only automobile dealerships, eating and drinking places, and food stores were a greater component of retail sales and only the latter employed more people. An understanding of one of the more important components of the US economy, retail trade, cannot occur in the absence of a thorough comprehension of its department store component (SIC 531).