The catering industry forms the subject of our first market analysis report. It is an industry which has been much criticised for its indifferent marketing and its inefficient use of labour. Ray Davey argues here that only franchising will help the independent caterer to survive.

Any article about training poses problems of theme. Should the theme be that of faith healing? Such a theme to indicate that ‘training costs money and may show no immediate reward but that faith and the observation of the principles laid down by the ‘Chosen Trainers’ will reap its reward...

The basic differences between VAT and purchase tax, apart from the wider range of goods and services subject to the new tax are:

American retailing is sometimes depicted as a collection of gigantic air‐conditioned enclosed exurban shopping malls populated by large scale enterprises that feature unlimited hours, unlimited parking, and almost unlimited credit. Such a stereotype is quite inaccurate as a picture of the...

In this special market analysis report, we take a look at the burgeoning home freezer business — an estimated 11 per cent home ownership by the end of this year. This has stimulated the development of home freezer centres, selling frozen food in excess of £20 million. Multiples and...

The electronic cash register has arrived on the scene, and is starting to take over operations formerly performed mechanically. By treating it as an integral part of an information reporting system, it can collect detailed data about the sales it records, thus providing a speedy and accurate...

The past decade has seen a tremendous change among retailers in their attitudes towards their property assets. Many changes had been mooted but it was only towards the end of the sixties that the full potential of retailers' property assets was realised.

Retailing in this country has developed as a set of responses to changing social conditions and the changing needs of the community, and this can be seen most clearly in food retailing. John Sainsbury recently gave a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts in which he discussed the origins of food...

The controversy which has been raging among planners, retailers and property developers over the last two or three years, concerning hypermarkets, has obscured one very important fact. Putting the environmental question aside for the moment, the principle of hypermarket trading has been with us...

What is the role of Wages Councils? Is their function as a means of protection for the lowest‐paid now outdated? On the basis of research into a number of food shops, the author argues that the operation of the Wages Council system can be both simplified and made more effective, primarily by...