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Three basic approaches to retail institutional change can be discerned in the last 30 years. The first contends that institutional evolution is a function of developments in the socio‐economic environment. The second argues that change occurs in a cyclical fashion. The third considers inter‐institutional conflict to be the mainspring of retail change. None of those approaches is found to be entirely satisfactory, and a series of combination theories has been posited. It is argued that regional institutional change is the result of environmental forces and a cycle‐like sequence of inter‐institutional conflict.

This paper aims to understand the factors affecting the evolution of retailing in India since the mid-nineteenth century.

This paper compares the trajectories of four distinct retail stores in India – Spencer’s pan-Indian retailing empire since 1863, Akbarallys’ department store chain in Mumbai since 1897, Apna Bazar’s consumer cooperative chain in Mumbai since 1948 and the Future Group’s pan-Indian retailing chain since the 1980s. Historical sources include firm biographies and newspaper archives.

This paper proposes a systems theory linking environmental influences and service innovation, to explain the evolution of retailing in India since the mid-nineteenth century. The key environmental influence on retailing has been state patronage – colonialism and high-end department stores until the 1940s, socialism and cooperative stores until the 1980s and liberalisation with restricted foreign direct investment in retailing until 2015 associated with indigenous corporate large retail format stores. Service innovation in terms of home delivery and recreation of the bazaar atmosphere due to norms on gender and community have also interacted to shape individual success in modern retailing and the dominance of small shop retailing over the long run.

This paper questions standard accounts of retailing history in India that began with the late-twentieth century by showing the scale of a pan-Indian retailing chain in the early-twentieth century. It also provides an account of retailers that is missing in the current literature on the history of consumption in India.

Findings of this study will be useful to marketing professionals and teachers who wish to learn more about the history of retailing in India. It also shows how retailers navigated changes in the regulatory and business environment.

Through a comparative study, this paper outlines the environmental influences on retail formats and service innovation strategies that are required to serve the Indian market. It also brings to fore the significance of retailing chains in colonial India.

Retailing has developed from independent merchants to multinational giants operating through global value chains, which has profoundly shaped consumption patterns in Western economies. This constant development currently consists of three global-scale change trajectories – climate change, online consumption, and technological development – that affect the retail industry. Based on this, this chapter concentrates on connecting the development paths of consumption and retailing and identifies various factors that affect the future of international retailing. The authors analyze the changes in institutional logics of international retailing by mapping the past, present, and future of the retail industry and consumption using content analysis of secondary data. The authors pay special attention to the effect of the current Covid-19 crisis on the future development of the retail industry. In the findings of this chapter, the authors recognize institutional logics changes in organizing the position of retailing as a connector of customers and producers, and the authors suggest blockchain to be an emerging new institutional order.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a taxonomy to describe and synthesize the retail strategies and store formats in the fast-changing modernization context of emerging markets. It identifies how these different formats are related to the existing literature about retail evolution. The paper proposes analogies between the empirical findings and the Big Middle Theory model developed by Levy et al. (2005).

Structured observations and personal interviews were conducted with managers/owners of 108 apparel stores located in three unplanned shopping districts in São Paulo, Brazil. Cluster analysis was used to derive the store formats.

The results identify four store formats – old fashioned, price focused, specialized, and consolidated – reflecting diverse marketing strategies and different stages in the retailing modernization cycle. There is a striking resemblance between these empirically derived formats and the four types of retail segments (Big Middle, Low price, Innovative, and in Trouble) proposed by the Big Middle model.

There are limitations due to the exploratory nature of the research: the specific context (São Paulo, apparel retail sector) where the empirical data was collected restricts the generalization of the results to other situations; lack of precision in the appraisal of the variables might limit the research replicability. Nevertheless, this research contributes to expanding the scarce knowledge about the retailing phenomenon in emerging markets. An extension of the Big Middle model is suggested to depict the existing retail formats in emerging markets, offering therefore a theoretical contribution to the retail literature.

The study provides retailers with a framework against which to map their format, competitive strategy, and stages of the modernization cycle, enabling them to better adjust the configuration of their marketing mix variables. It also offers a classification scheme of stores formats which will help to describe the apparel retailing industry in emerging markets.

Public policies are suggested to technically assist the modernization process and survival of more vulnerable retail formats.

Considering the fast-growing economic importance of the new “low-middle class” of emerging markets, and also the relevance of apparel retailing, this research is relevant and unique because it helps to bridge a gap in the limited literature and knowledge in this area.

The paper examines the role that potentially could be played by the retailing sector in the economic and social transformation in Russia. The move towards a consumer goods society, by its very definition, necessitates the developments of channels whereby consumer goods can reach their end customer and consumer. In this context various models of relating evolution are considered as well as an examination of the possible methods by which retailing will develop over time. The potential for inward investments is examined but the paper concludes that inward investment by retailers from the western European states will take the form of skills investment rather than financial and operational investment. The most important element in the future evolution of retailing will be the development of the multiple format as well as the procurement from indigenous consumer goods suppliers “driven” by the multiple retailers.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of an exploratory qualitative study of the evolution of modern food retailing in Tanzania (from both retailers and suppliers’ perspectives).

The qualitative case approach was used in this study. Participants were drawn from three sets of actors: retailers, local food suppliers, and government institutions. Data were collected using semi-structured interview format. Thematic qualitative analytical technique was used for the data analysis.

According to the results of the study, seven major factors that account for the evolution of modern food retail in the country were identified. These are availability of suppliers, acceptance of trade credit, innovation, lifestyle change, institutional support, convenience, and availability of consumers.

The study has expanded the knowledge of the evolution of modern food retail in developing economies by using the relationship marketing theory. Furthermore, the study employed some major actors in the food value chain to understand determinant factors that accelerated the evolution of supermarkets in Tanzania.

Explains the Wheel of Retailing as an attempt to explain the dynamics of change and evolution at the social level. Suggests that the theory of new retail institutions beginning with low levels of prices and services and then upgrading is not always proved to be so. Concludes that retailing is a social process with the development of institutions determined by the society in which they exist and not by a deterministic pattern of development.

Argues that convergent trends in environmental evolution have led to convergent swings towards structural changes in the European retailing market. However, substantial differences continue to survive, each country preserving its specificities, the fruits of its history and culture. The single European market is not therefore uniform and, compared with the manufacturing industry, remains localized.

A blurring of distinctions among stores and consumers in a changing market‐place has broad ramifications for retailers, manufacturers, and wholesalers. In this paper we will first examine how stores are becoming alike, using a strategic tool to identify problems and anticipate competitive response. Second, we will see how several retail leaders have not fallen into a mold but have been able to differentiate, diversify, and grow. Next, we will consider the implications of the wholesale/warehouse club as a new stage in the evolution of retailing and wholesaling. Finally, we will examine manufacturers' concerns in coping with rapid retail evolution.

Using a continuous dataset, the purpose of this study is to explore the evolution of retailing in the historical city centre of Utrecht between 1974 and 2003.

Following an evolutionary framework entropy statistics and sector analysis are used to investigate the structural changes that have occurred over this period.

The results indicate important changes over time. First, there is a decline of shops selling daily and space consuming goods. Second, the expansion of some sectors and the emergence of new sectors has compensated fully for the loss of these shops. The success of some of these sectors is related to the rise of recreational shopping. Despite increased competition of “out‐of‐town” retailing and other forms of retailing, Utrecht's historical city centre has remained on top of the retail hierarchy in The Netherlands by transforming itself into an attractive location for recreational shopping.

The results indicate that new policies should encourage retail entrepreneurship to adapt to ever changing socio‐economic and spatial contexts. Furthermore, in most sectors that are under pressure, possibilities exist to shift to related categories through what may be called upgrading.

In the main, the data investigate sector dynamics. Future research on the evolution of retail locations using time‐series, therefore, should try to include more variables, like floor space, organisation type, etc. which can also provide explanations for the patterns of structural change.

The paper has introduced entropy statistics as a new technique to analyse sector variety dynamics of retail locations, since it captures both the number of sectors and the skewness of distribution.