The recent surge forward in equity markets has seen the share prices of our leading retailers outperform the broadly based indices by generous margins. Since the stockmarket reached a low point in October last year, food retail shares have shown a rise of 136.5 per cent, according to the FT...

Currys, originally associated with cycles, claim now to be the largest consumer durable multiple in the UK. It has not been a good time for consumer durable retailers but nonetheless the company has done well with turnover more than doubled over the past five years. The market aimed at is wide;...

International Stores have now started Phase 2 of their Plain and Simple promotion campaign, which offers simply presented packs at guaranteed fixed prices for three months. Effective distribution is an important element in the marketing plan, as will be seen in this feature based on an interview...

Habitat recently opened up new terri‐tory by starting its first store in America in New York — although the first tiresome problem they had to overcome was a change of name to “Conran's”, since there is a lighting company in the States called Habitat. Terence Conran's intention is to...

Tesco's decision in June to drop trading stamps was not simply a matter of promotional change, but an essential element in the formulation of the whole trading policy of the company. Three cardinal questions demanded consideration: Tesco's own position in the market; the short‐term prospects...

The costs of feeding the nation are of various kinds — raw materials, labour, marketing and distribution. There is also the cost of government intervention, and membership of the EEC carries with it both advantages and disadvantages. This is a summary of an address by Derrick Hornby, President...

What will be the effects in the near future of computer technology on physical distribution? Bob Beckham thinks that “significant and considerable” possibilities will be opened up by the new generation of systems that will become available in the eighties. Dramatically improved performance...

The boom in retail sales forecast for the current year has definitely failed to materialise. In the first three quarters in 1976 the volume of sales was down by 3% on the level of a year ago, and some areas, such as food retailing, where sales could end the year down 4 or more percentage points,...

With the emergence of new social attitudes and styles over the last ten years or so, many of the more old‐established menswear retailers found themselves losing business to the trend‐setters. But Homes have built their product range on “life style”, based on a belief that the Hornes...

Some two and a half years ago the Universal Product Code was introduced into the United States, and a number of American supermarket groups installed scanning systems. In spite of some initial problems, certain positive advantages soon emerged. NCR in America recently carried out a survey...