The Fashion Industry in Galicia: Understanding the 'Zara' Phenomenon

Galicia is traditionally one of the weaker regional economies in Spain. However it is home to one of the most successful global marketing phenomena of the age. Zara, the mid-market fashion arm of the Galician INDITEX Group, is amongst the 'culprits' that have been blamed for the demise from high street hegemony of such European retail notables as C&A, Littlewoods and Marks & Spencer. In this paper an analysis is provided of the mechanisms by which this peripheral region has succeeded in producing, from virtually nothing, a globally outstanding retail fashion industry in one of the world's most cutthroat competitive industries. It is shown that regional, national and supra-national factors have had important parts to play, but that the Galician approach is nevertheless unique, compared to that of other fashion clothing regions. Among the special features at play are high levels of tacit and codified knowledge exploitation, integrated design, production and retailing and advanced retail feedback technology that enables anticipation of customer preference.     

Geographical structure in nineteenth-century urban retailing: Milwaukee, 1836–1890

This study explores the spatial structure of retailing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the era before the introduction of the electric streetcar in 1890. It uses city directory listings to chart changes in the numbers and types of retail outlets, their degree of nucleation and the functional complexity of such nucleations. The evidence suggests the early appearance of non-central retailing, the rapid dispersal of high as well as low order goods to non-central sites and the early emergence initially of a three-level and then, by 1870, a four-level hierarchy of shopping clusters. The pattern of retail clustering varied with the class and ethnic character of neighbourhoods, and clusters gravitated toward major arterial routes even in the pre-mass transit ear. Urban retailing in the second half of the nineteenth century was neither randomly dispersed nor over-whelmingly concentrated in a single central retail district, but developed a spatial hierarchy that clearly anticipated modern patterns.     

TWENTIETH-CENTURY RETAIL CHANCE IN THE HALIFAX CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT

The Halifax downtown area has experienced considerably change in the amount, type, and location of retailing in this century, exemplifying many processes and patterns typical of North American cbds. Owing to increased competition from suburban business districts, retail activity has remained fairly constant in absolute terms but has declined relative to the rest of the urban area. In response, the mix of downtown retailing has been reoriented to emphasize the district's comparative advantages, cbd retailers have differentiated their goods and services from those of suburban competitors but have also attempted to provide settings and amenities - notably, indoor malls and off-street parking - which mimic those found at suburban shopping centres. Such changes are investigated in this case study by means of two broad questions: (1) how and why has the cbd's overall mix of retail types changed through time, and (2) how and why have changes occurred in the location of retailing and retail types within the cbd?     

商品邮购(电话购物)的空间扩散与消费者抉择

信息通信技术在商品流通中的重要作用日渐明显,并且展现着进一步加强的趋势。电话(视)购物是当今已经"漫射"开来的普通电信在商业活动中应用的一个事实,可能对现存的地区性传统零售集团产生决定性影响-补充与替代共存。本文考查了国外邮(电)购的经验,并与我们在石家庄样区开展的调查工作进行了对比。最后我们对邮(电)购相关的区域规划问题进行了探讨,认为其与电话购物之电信服务方式的空间扩散相互影响。本文也旨在揭示这种零售方式是如何改善边远地区的购物条件的。     

互联网技术应用对零售业空间组织影响研究进展

互联网技术应用对零售业空间组织的影响已成为当今学术界研究热点。本文利用文献资料法和对比分析法,梳理了国内外互联网技术应用对零售业空间组织结构、零售企业区位选择与布局、市场空间等方面的影响研究,并提出了未来人文地理学须进一步强化的研究内容。结果表明：20世纪90年代中期以来,互联网技术应用对零售业空间组织影响的研究成果日益丰富,且涉及到经济地理学和商业学等学科,研究方法主要以定性为主,且定量研究日益增多,但对互联网技术应用对传统零售业区位选择和销售腹地的影响、中小网络零售企业空间组织、运输距离对网络零售企业销售空间影响以及出口跨境网络零售企业销售空间格局等方面研究还需完善,未来研究应注重吸收其他学科理论和方法,强化实证研究结论的科学性。     

Principles of a Territorial Differentiation of Retail Prices

A system of territorial differentials in retail prices for consumer goods in the Soviet Union is considered essential as long as regional physical and other geographic differences produce cost differentials in production and transportation. It is suggested that the present system of three price zones be revised for individual food products to take fuller account of distance between producing and consuming areas.     

郊区化背景下北京市民城市中心商业区的利用特征

通过微观层面上对北京市居民中心商业中心消费行为的调查,分析郊区化背景下城市中心商业区发展现状,通过市民对城市中心商业区利用特征及其所反映的中心商业区发展问题来认识城市商业空间的变化。虽然城市中心传统商业区仍然在北京市居民消费中保持着重要地位,但是其购物空间已经表现出逐渐向迅速发展的近郊商业区转移的趋势;同时,随着新业态的迅速发展和私家车的普及,中心商业区将面临越发严峻的挑战。     

20世纪30年代中国农业雇工收入地区差异研究

本文采用卜凯1929—1933年所做的中国农村调查数据,用基尼系数法计算了我国不同地区农业雇工平均收入水平及差距,并采用非参数的高斯核密度估计方法分析农业雇工收入分布情况及影响机制。研究表明:20世纪30年代农业雇工收入水平地区差异性客观存在但并未出现两极分化;农业雇工平均收入水平按地区发展状况呈阶梯状递减趋势,地区内部农业雇工收入差距与地区经济发达水平大体呈正U型发展态势;东、中、西部地区之间发展的不均衡性是导致全国农业雇工收入差距较大的重要因素。     

Gender,Retail Employment and the Clothing Commodity Chain

This article analyzes the conditions of employment in fashion retailing, arguing that fashion retailing constitutes a distinct sector of retailing. The fashion commodity chain is characterized by a unique spatiality and temporality and as a result, female retail workers share much in common with women situated at production, advertising and consumption sites in the chain. Given that many of the issues women confront at different sites are similar, the sector is amenable to organizing across the chain.     

Consumption,exclusion and emotion: The social geographies of shopping

In recent years, a productive dialogue has developed between retail geographers and those social geographers concerned with the spatiality of consumption. This has resulted in a series of accounts of shopping that emphasize notions of consumer creativity. Nonetheless, this paper argues that many of these have struggled to reconcile the meaning of shopping with an understanding of the material parameters within which consumers operate. Recognizing that this tendency has distracted from the socio-spatial inequalities evident in retailing, the paper examines how shopping rituals are embedded in social relations that discourage particular shoppers from visiting certain retail locations. Drawing on extensive and intensive data derived in Coventry (UK), the paper questions the extent to which this geography of exclusion is the product of constraint, arguing that shopping is shaped by a more complex spatiality of inclusion and (self-) exclusion. Accordingly, the paper makes the case for a social geography of shopping that pays careful attention to the emotionally laden transactions played out in particular settings.     

广州地铁沿线零售商业形态与空间分布探讨

选取我国地铁发展速度最快的城市之一的广州作为背景,以地铁沿线商用物业的核心圈层为对象,本文在调查分析地铁沿线零售商业的串珠状组团式的空间分布特征和以百货店为主的多业态并存的业态结构特征的基础上,探讨了地铁沿线商业业态聚集的空间等级和各等级的业态空间类型,分析了其内部和外部因素,并揭示了地铁对零售空间分异、商业热点的形成及零售客流的影响作用。     

Retail Development in The Netherlands: Evaluating the Effects of Radical Changes in Planning Policy

After long years of a protective national retail planning policy, the Dutch national government decided in 2004 on a radical shift with respect to this policy, by abolishing restrictive retail regulations. The provinces have recently responded by reinstalling the main elements of the national retail planning model at the regional level. This article shows that nevertheless unintended structural changes in the Dutch retail landscape have occurred. Building on theoretical perspectives on institutional change and normative approaches to planning, the article evaluates the rationale behind the shifts in the planning regime and the extent to which the “new” planning regime meets the conditions for a collaborative planning approach. Additionally, regional differences in the effectiveness of retail planning are analysed and related to regional differences in the planning regime.     

浅析上海市大卖场的空间区位选择

以大型超市、仓储式商场组成的大卖场是上海近几年来迅速发展的一种新型业态。在经济全球化背景下,国外的各类商业零售业将大举进入,对中国的零售业市场带来了一定的冲击和新的机遇。本文以上海大卖场为着手点,在分析了大卖场布局的区位因子的基础上,研究了上海大卖场空间布局特征从而提出了合理布局大卖场的建议。     

FIXED-POINT RETAIL LOCATION IN THE MAJOR TOWNS OF ROMAN BRITAIN

Summary.   Although it has not generally been recognized, tabernae (shops and workshops) were an important part of the process of urbanization and the urban form of the towns of Roman Britain. The objective of this paper is to examine the location of fixed-point retailing establishments within the urban landscape. Workshops (also known as officinae ) and retail activity probably constitute the largest and perhaps one of the most distinct aspects of any urban settlement. Based upon the discussion presented below, this paper will seek to show that there were important contests for retail space in the major settlements of Roman Britain. This paper also considers some of the factors that influence retail location to show that the towns of Roman Britain were complex socio-economic environments.     

The big box, the flagship, and beyond: impacts and trends in the Greater Toronto Area

The recent introduction of big box retailers into Canadian cities has altered dramatically the competitive retail landscape. This rapid restructuring of the urban retail economy have occurred since the introduction of the big box/power centre phenomenon in the early 1990s. The analysis integrates the extensive databases that reside at the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity with insights gained from the popular press. These two sources of information were used to interpret the spatial and structural impacts of big box retailing on the traditional urban retail structure in the Greater Toronto Area. The growth of the big boxes illustrates the form of retail development that results from more permissive retail land use policies. A period where the development policies and processes of the past that controlled shopping centre development has been replaced by a more laissez-faire approach.     

THE EFFECT OF RETAIL FIRM OWNERSHIP ON PRICE EQUILIBRIUM*

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the effect of retail firm ownership on price equilibrium using a simple linear-city model. It is shown that price divergence emerges due to the differences in retail firm ownership, because retail firms under different ownership internalize shopping externalities differently. It is also shown that if a commercial center has two specialized retail firms, these stores charge the same markup for different goods at the equilibrium.     

AGGLOMERATION AND GROWTH WITH ENDOGENOUS EXPENDITURE SHARES*

ABSTRACT We develop a New Economic Geography and Growth model which, by using a CES utility function in the second‐stage optimization problem, allows for expenditure shares in industrial goods to be endogenously determined. The implications of our generalization are quite relevant. In particular, we obtain the following novel results: (1) two additional nonsymmetric interior steady states emerge for some intermediate values of trade costs. These steady‐states are stable if the industrial and the traditional goods are either good or very poor substitutes, while they are unstable for intermediate (yet lower than one) values of the intersectoral elasticity of substitution. In the latter case, the model displays three interior steady states—the symmetric and the core‐periphery allocations—which are stable at the same time; (2) agglomeration processes may always take place, whatever the degree of market integration, provided that the traditional and the industrial goods are sufficiently good substitutes; (3) the regional rate of growth is affected by the interregional allocation of economic activities even in the absence of localized spillovers, so that geography always matters for growth and (4) the regional rate of growth is affected by the degree of market openness: in particular, depending on whether the traditional and the industrial goods are good or poor substitutes, economic integration may be, respectively, growth‐enhancing or growth‐detrimental.     

THE IMPACT OF SPECIFIC-SECTOR CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE AND MIGRATION

ABSTRACT.  It is common in empirical regional economics to use total employment as an explanatory variable while investigating issues such as the level and distribution of income and migration. This paper argues that sector-specific changes in employment and labor market performance can have different effects on economic growth, the collection of tax revenue, migration, and the level and distribution of household income. As such, it is important to model sectors separately. We find that expansions in employment opportunities for a high-wage sector such as computer manufacturing or bioengineering, a medium-wage sector manufacturing, and the lower-wage sector of retailing have differing economic consequences for a small city. We use a data intensive computable general equilibrium model to obtain these results.     

国外对零售业及其附生——衍生的营业性娱乐场所的空间关系研究

零售业及其附生-衍生的营业性娱乐场所是城市居民日常生活(闲暇娱乐)行为的四大场所之一,零售业中附生-衍生的娱乐场所的类型、结构与空间模式是揭示城市社会-生活空间质量的重要方面,本文从城市社会地理学以及人类文化生态学等多学科的研究角度,分析与总结国外学者对零售业及其附生-衍生的营业性娱乐场所的研究现状、内容以及其在城市中的空间作用与(社会)空间关系。     

Beyond the Modern Supermarket: Geographical Approaches to the Analysis of Contemporary Australian Retail Restructuring

The recent development of new supermarket forms in Australia (Woolworths Metro and Coles Express) provides important insights into the changing geographical forms of grocery retailing and consumption in Australia. Using a multi‐layered approach designed to integrate three overlapping geographical processes relevant to this issue: urban socio‐economic restructuring, shifting spatial arenas of consumption and the corporate geographies of major retailers, the paper identifies the ways that these developments decentre traditionally dominant supermarket discourses. These new supermarket forms are important because they provide a vehicle for the nation’s two pre‐eminent supermarket chains to extend their retail reach, and effect a blurring of taken‐for‐granted retail categories. Although these developments are new and tentative, they presage wider changes in the emerging geographical structures of Australian grocery retailing, and the linkages between urban spaces and modes of consumption.