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The case that the industrial buyer is a risk avoider is not difficult to sustain. Every buying organisation, to a greater or lesser degree, demonstrates symptoms of such behaviour every day. Among these symptoms, the most apparent to the observer is the tendency to retain established suppliers even when competitive alternatives are available. Clearly, to take on a new supplier involves some aspect of risk of failure—even if only of a “teething trouble” nature. A second symptom in production organisations is that which is implied in the statement “we must keep the line moving”. One consequence of this is the tendency to maintain raw material and component inventory levels which err on the high side. In flow production situations involving expensive capital equipment, for example, it is reasonably easy to defend such behaviour. As one Materials Manager put it: “If I stop the line for one hour it costs this company £x,000. There would need to be remarkable cost savings to interest me in changing our present level of stocks or our major suppliers”. Another symptom is a tendency to over‐specify, or to pay “a little more” to ensure that the supplier performs within the required parameters.

This is indeed the age of revolution, when timeless attitudes are changing and new ways of living being born. To most it is a bewildering complex, with uneasy forbodirtgs of the outcome. Improvement and change, there must always be—although change is not necessarily progress—but with unrest in the schools, universities and industry, one naturally questions if this is the right time for such sweeping reorganization as now seems certain to take place in local government and in the structure of the national health service. These services have so far escaped the destructive influences working havoc in other spheres. Area health boards to administer all branches of the national health service, including those which the National Health Service Act, 1946 allowed local health authorities to retain, were recommended by the Porritt Committee a number of years ago, when it reviewed the working of the service.

The purpose of this paper is to present historical research on marketing practices in department stores of the 1880-1930 period using primary source records from Australia.

The paper draws from primary records including retail trade journals, mass circulation newspapers, and other contemporary sources, but mainly from the archives of The Master Retailers' Association (MRA). The MRA was the dominant industry employers' organisation in Australia, and possibly the first retail association of its kind in the Western world. Secondary sources have also been used to supplement the primary records, and to provide context, and cross-cultural comparisons.

The findings demonstrate the antecedents of a range of marketing practices that today we presume are modern, including sales promotion, trade promotion, direct mail, destination retailing, advertising, and consumer segmentation. This supports other scholars' research into marketing's long history.

This paper contributes original knowledge to the neglected field of Australian marketing history and connects the pioneering practices of retailers to the broader field of marketing. While some outstanding retail histories exist for the USA, UK, and France, the Australian story has remained largely uncovered.

Farmer encourages the use of multiple perspectives as a means of developing robust knowledge. He points out that it is impossible to fully know any thing from a single vantage point. Further he encourages us to reflect on how our perspective shapes what and how we see. He also points out that practice is the test of theory. I apply that maxim here, considering how my understanding of the city of Newark, NJ is impacted by the perspective from which I view it, and by exploring how other vantage points may yield different views of the city.

The question has been recently raised as to how far the operation of the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts of 1875, 1879, and 1899, and the Margarine Act, 1887, is affected by the Act 29 Charles II., cap. 7, “for the better observation of the Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday.” At first sight it would seem a palpable absurdity to suppose that a man could escape the penalties of one offence because he has committed another breach of the law at the same time, and in this respect law and common‐sense are, broadly speaking, in agreement; yet there are one or two cases in which at least some show of argument can be brought forward in favour of the opposite contention.

There was an air of artificial heresy about the paper published by Green and Nordstrom in 1974. They hailed the merits of being a “disloyal buyer” at a time when the world reality was one of oil and other raw material shortages, when the scales of market power were tipping inevitably towards the seller rather than the buyer. They argued that too often the loyal buyer is taken for granted by the supplier who is always more eager, led by his greed, to pursue the potential market at the expense of “good old Sam” whose longstanding custom is deliberately expoited. Green and Nordstrom therefore believe that greater opportunism will pay higher dividends to the buyer.

In Chapter One it was argued that multinational companies should give adequate emphasis to procurement factors in their corporate planning. While this argument is difficult to refute, many multinational companies do not pay sufficient attention to this aspect of their planning. This article presents some of the conclusions from a study which investigated the extent to which procurement factors were considered in the planning of these firms.

Materials Administration, Materials Management and most of the other integrative concepts which have been proposed, have one feature in common. They emphasise the need to view the system to which they relate as a whole. A key argument of those who promote these concepts is often that problems occur between departments or functions more often than in them. Thus is follows, continues the argument, that a system‐wide view aimed at co‐ordinating objectives, strategies and operations would help to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole system. But what is this “whole system”? Where do its boundaries lie? Are we talking about the firm, the industry or the economy? As far as this paper is concerned, the relevant system comprises more than the individual firm and includes the set of suppliers to the firm. It is the main theme of the paper that the benefits of taking a holistic perspective in this way may be the prelude to achieving enhanced efficiency not only to the individual firms concerned but possibly to the economy as a whole. It is argued that the traditional competitive model of buyer‐supplier behaviour in industrial materials markets is inadequate and that the incumbents of both roles can benefit by taking a longer term and wider perspective and working together to improve the effectiveness of the overall relationship.

Those who move among the people with their eyes open will not doubt that the number of non‐smokers is increasing, but mostly among older adults. Sales of cigarettes, despite the ban on advertising and the grim warning printed on packets, do not reflect this however, which can only mean that those who still smoke are the heavy smokers. This is a bad sign; as is the fact that youngsters, including a high percentage of those at school, openly flaunt the habit. The offence of using tobacco or any other smoking mixture or snuff while handling food or in any food room in which there is open food (Reg. 10(e)), remains one of the common causes of prosecutions under the Food Hygiene Regulations; it has not diminished over the years. The commonest offenders are men and especially those in the butchery trade, fishmongers and stall‐holders, but, here again, to those who move around, the habit seems fairely widespread. Parts of cigarettes continue to be a common finding especially in bread and flour confectionery, but also in fresh meat, indicating that an offence has been committed, and only a few of the offenders end up in court. Our purpose in returning to the subject of smoking, however, is not to relate it to food hygiene but to discuss measures of control being suggested by the Government now that advertising bans and printed health warnings have patently failed to achieve their object.