Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the causes of the failure of the Larkin Company (Buffalo, NY), once one of the nation's largest mail‐order houses in the decades surrounding 1900. Design/methodology/approach – Borrowing conceptual frameworks from both recent...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the origins and the business model of department stores in Mexico between 1891 and 1910. Design/methodology/approach – Primary and secondary source material support an historical and comparative study of retailing and marketing evolution in a...

Purpose – Focusing on the early development of the three major forms of local advertising employed by independent department stores across the USA – newspapers, radio, and television – this paper examines continuity in the industry's commercial use of new technologies....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine retailer response to the use of alternative currency, or scrip, as an emergency measure during the Great Depression. Advocates of scrip argue that it would help recovery efforts, encouraging consumer spending and keeping dollars “at home”...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of a significant group of retail employees, specifically the African‐American operations and service workers that worked behind the scenes in department stores during the Jim Crow era, defined here as 1890‐1965....