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Over the years, department stores have dealt with unique challenges, including massive changes in city and then suburban landscapes and shopping patterns, shifts in consumer preferences, and, more recently, electronic commerce. The purpose of this paper is to discuss additional community-oriented marketing approaches for department stores.

The approach looks at the role of traditional department stores in communities and their economic impact and uses ideas from a variety of community-based mobile services, including medical, food and library outreach.

The findings are that the importance of physical retailers such as department stores to a community deserves further consideration by civic and business leaders and that a variety of services and products have been successfully marketed in communities through additional approaches such as mobile units.

The approaches presented could enhance community development.

While department stores have held distinctive places in many cities, these enterprises lack the type of regional fan base that advocates actively for other kinds of industries. A community-oriented marketing approach for department stores is discussed, with ideas for future research that could build on these stores’ special brand attributes and on their contributions to the viability of an area.