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Focusing upon British retailing, the purpose of this paper is to review what is known both about the importance of different supply networks at different points in time, and about the attitudes of different groups of consumers towards these networks.

Relying primarily upon secondary sources, the paper discusses the ways in which the literature on retailing beyond the shop has developed during the past 40 years, and particularly during the past ten years or so.

The paper shows that although it is difficult to delineate the scale and importance of retailing beyond the shop, there is a growing consensus that shops were by no means the sole, or necessarily dominant, source of supply. It shows too that consumers' attitudes towards both commercial and non‐commercial exchanges were complex and sometimes contradictory, with non‐commercial transactions particularly difficult to disentangle and interpret. However, it should not be assumed, it is suggested, that notions of value and ties of reciprocity inevitably fell victim to the growing forces of industrialisation and urbanisation.

The paper adopts a broad chronological perspective and introduces readers to sources, evidence, ideas and concepts that shed light on British retail development and change.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that changes in urban retail markets in the first half of the nineteenth century should be viewed as significant innovations in retailing methods.

Retail innovation is set in the context of urban growth, changing consumer demand and product availability. A brief review of the literature leads into a discussion of innovation in non‐shop retailing and of the need for markets to adapt to a changing context. Evidence from local authority archives, particularly Stockport and Birkenhead in Cheshire, is used to explore this in more detail, including the construction of purpose‐built market halls.

Markets remained pivotal to the supply of food and some other goods. They offered a familiar yet controlled and safe environment. But market halls represented a significant innovation in terms of their size and of the money and civic pride invested in them. Local context, including ownership of market rights, was important in determining how markets adapt to urban growth.

Business records of market traders tend not to survive from this period; so, findings have to be derived from more indirect sources. The need for further research into local authority archives is indicated.

The first half of the nineteenth century is a relatively neglected period in recent retail history research. The paper draws attention to innovation in this period. It provides local context for innovations like market halls that are well documented at a general level, but less well researched locally.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate some of the recent progress in the study of the history of retailing, with particular reference to analyses of the British retail market during the twentieth century.

Three themes were addressed, each of which has significant potential to enhance our understanding of the historical development of the retail sector. The paper considered both conceptual and empirical contributions to the discussion on the history of retailing, with particular reference to the business management literature. The approach involved a review of recently published literature.

Whilst there have been a number of important additions of late to the retail history literature, considerable scope remains for engagement with, and contribution to, the theory building taking place within business management.

The author identifies some of the lacunae within research on the history of retailing.

The paper illustrates some of the ways in which the study of retailing history can be productively linked with debates within contemporary studies of business management.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the value of history within a contemporary retail management and marketing context.

The progress that has been made in incorporating historical methods and history into the retail management and marketing literature was considered.

The paper explains how history is able to develop understanding in research areas that are by their nature oriented toward contemporary concerns.

The importance of maintaining an historical perspective and not allowing the present to determine an understanding of the past are emphasised. That is, for research to understand the past on its own terms and for the past to help determine an understanding of the present.

The paper explores practical implications for the study of history in the retail management and marketing context.

The paper addresses the dilemma researchers facing in subject areas where it is much easier to see history as a precursor to current activities, rather than as an opportunity to explore questions in different contexts and within longer time frames.

This paper aims to reconsider and reframe the relationship between retail and consumer revolutions, arguing that the two have too often been separated empirically and conceptually.

Reviewing a broad range of literature, the paper discussed the ways in which the historiography of retailing and consumption might be brought together by a greater focus on and theorisation of shopping.

The paper highlights equivocation in the literature about the extent to which retailing was transformed during the eighteenth century in response to consumer changes. Whilst some aspects were dramatically transformed, others remained largely unchanged. It draws on a rather smaller body of work to illustrate the ways in which shopping practices were instrumental in connecting shops and consumers, linking the cultural world of consumption to the economic realm of retailing.

The key argument is that, if studies of shopping are to be useful in furthering the understanding of retailing and consumption, then the paper must theorise shopping more fully. In particular, the paper emphasises the insights afforded by notions of performance and identity, and by analyses of consumer motivation; arguing that these offer the opportunity to link shopping to wider debates over politeness, gender roles and even modernity.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the merchandise offered and bought at late‐nineteenth‐century English jumble sales, to understand the place of jumble sales and used goods in the domestic budgets of the poors, and to investigate the reasons for purchasing from jumble sales rather than other second‐hand goods outlets.

The paper analyses Anglican Parish Magazines and social surveys, in late‐Victorian England, focusing on two commodities: clothing and carpets.

Jumble sales were organised by the middle and upper classes for the poor, into whose multiple provisioning strategies they were rapidly integrated, although admission fees excluded the poorest. The sales supplied both necessary and non‐essential items and were eagerly attended, but there is no evidence that they were preferred to other second‐hand outlets or that the goods on offer were cheaper or better quality. Although a site of class interaction, jumble sales also served to maintain class separation.

The geographical spread of this paper omits the most southern, northern and western counties. Further work is also needed to determine more precisely the quality and cost of jumble‐sale merchandise, the age and gender of the customers, and differences between urban and rural sales.

Through interrogation of an underused source, parish magazines, the paper redresses the scholarly neglect of a significant and enduring sector of the used goods market. The paper is of value to historians of marketing, philanthropy, consumption, dress, and the English working classes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore eighteenth‐century London retailers' attitudes to shoplifting and their strategies for countering customer theft.

The paper is based on an examination of contemporary documentary evidence, in particular a quantitative and qualitative analysis of shopkeeper practice drawn from trial transcripts of shoplifting prosecutions at London's highest criminal court, the Old Bailey.

The paper reveals that shopkeepers predominantly invested in preventative measures to control customer theft, rather than relying on prosecution. It demonstrates that improved shop fittings and new marketing methods served to reinforce the effectiveness of this strategy. The techniques that retailers employed are shown to directly reflect the nature and location of the risks they experienced, even to the extent of being a contributory factor in the withdrawal of women from the retail sector during this period.

The study is limited to a sample of London trials and the experiences of retailers who prosecuted.

This is the first study of shoplifting prevention in this period. It analyses retailer practice and illustrates how this interacted with their perception of the prevalence of criminality, demonstrating that their approach to stock protection anticipated that of modern retailers. It complements existing scholarship on eighteenth‐century retailing and marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the acquisition of clothing through informal trading channels by provincial working‐class consumers between 1800 and 1850. It argues that the informal trade fulfilled various functions for such consumers, both as buyers and sellers: clothing could be sold to raise cash quickly and bought at a cheap price, while the informal trade may also have reinforced local community networks and other social relationships.

The paper focuses on the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire to provide a case study that highlights any differences in informal networks arising out of geographical variations. Documentation for the informal trade has been gathered from records of court cases and newspaper reporting of criminal trials involving stolen clothing.

The informal trade in clothing involved everyday, ordinary clothing, usually sold for money, but often for goods in kind and/or social credit. The trade operated over all areas of the two counties and seems to have been an important method for acquiring cheap clothing where retail provision was not yet fully developed to cater for all social classes.

The link between all facets of retailing is highlighted, as is the importance of placing informal trading networks within their local retailing environment. Their success relied on participants' knowledge about the goods, on trust in each other and often on expectations of mutuality. The informal trade was an important strategy for working‐class clothing acquisition in both rural and urban areas. The trade in illicit clothing formed a large proportion of the informal trade, and its analysis also sheds light on the informal trade in licit clothing.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main practitioners, goods, customers and locations of secondhand marketing activities in late medieval England. It questions how important was the economic role played by such markets and what was the interaction with more formal market structures?

A broad range of evidence was examined, covering the period from 1200 to 1500: regulations, court rolls, wills, manorial accounts, literature, and even archaeology. Such material often provided mere scraps of information about marginal marketing activity and it was important to recognise the severe limitations of the evidence. Nevertheless, a wide survey of the available sources can give us an insight into medieval attitudes towards such trade, as well as reminding us that much marketing activity occurred beyond the reach of the surviving documentation.

Late medieval England had numerous outlets for secondhand items, from sellers of used clothes and furs who wandered the marketplaces to craftsmen who recycled and mended old materials. Secondhand marketing was an important part of the medieval makeshift economy, serving not only the needs of the lower sectors of society but also those aspiring to a higher status. However, it is unlikely that such trade generated much profit and the traders were often viewed as marginal, suspicious and even fraudulent.

There is a distinct lack of research into the extent of and significance of medieval secondhand marketing, which existed in the shadowy margins of formal markets and is thus poorly represented in the primary sources. A broad‐based approach to the evidence can highlight a variety of important issues, which impact upon the understanding of the medieval English economy.