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Considers the structure of grocery retailing in Australia and, in particular, presents and contrasts the development strategies being pursued by the three major retailers in this highly concentrated market. Woolworth’s, the market leader, is a classic corporate recovery story and is emerging as one of the most impressive food retailers in the world. By contrast, the grocery businesses of Coles Myer, Australia’s leading retailer and one of the largest retailers in the world, are under intense pressure from both a rejuvenated Woolworth’s and the company’s own internal weaknesses, many of which are a legacy of a long period of unchallenged market dominance. Coles now faces the challenge of reinventing itself and is taking an approach quite different to that of Woolworth’s. Franklins is number three in Australian grocery retailing and its origins are as a price aggressive discounter. However, as Franklins’ own market position has come under pressure, the company is responding by moving towards more direct competition with Coles and Woolworth’s.

The purpose of this paper is to present a view of how a retail chain store and its marketing strategies impacted on shopping habits in twentieth century Ireland.

Primary and secondary sources include company documents, oral history and press reports. Background social, political and economic factors are considered in conjunction with the methods this firm used to build customer-driven managed marketing systems and teams of good staff relationships.

Woolworth's Irish stores responded to changing tastes and needs of consumers throughout Ireland. The Irish market required skilful techniques to overcome widening divisions within customer profiles to accommodate increasing north-south and urban-rural patterns. Welcomed by shoppers of all ages and genders, this firm's contribution to Ireland's retailing and wider commercial scene was innovative, popular, flexible and influential.

The overview of this well-known retail chain store's experience in twentieth century Ireland can provide scholars with building blocks on which to expand knowledge and develop further understanding of a largely un-tapped field of research within the history of marketing in Ireland.

In the Coen Brothers’ film, O Brother Where Are Thou?, set in depression‐era southern USA, one of the three convicts on the run is thrown out of a Woolworth’s shop and told never to come back. “Does this mean I’m banned from just this shop or all Woolworth’s?” Delmar, played by Tim Blake Nelson, worries. The joke reflects the affection that existed then, and does still, for a retailer that is seen by many people as being cheap and cheerful. However, loved or not “Woolies” is in crisis. When Trevor Bish‐Jones was appointed chief executive in March last year he took over a retailer facing huge problems.

Woolworth has once again disappointed its fast dwindling band of stock market fans. After several years of heightened expectations, and periodic share price flurries, performance has been disappointing. Adjusting for last year's thirteen month accounting period sales were up by 12% on an annual basis, while pre‐tax profits, for the year ended January 31 were ahead by just half that amount. It is easy to see why Woolworth's record inspires little confidence in some quarters. Taking in last year's results, sales have crawled along at an average growth rate of 8% over the past four years, while 1973/74 pre tax profits of £43.3m are just 17% above their 1969 level. A poor showing when compared with the performance of most other major retailers.

Embarking on a major refurbishment programme requires careful thought and planning. The changeover time must be limited so that store closure and customer inconvenience is minimised. In undertaking its programme, Woolworth chose to work with Rentacrate.

In an ariticle last year, (RDM, May/June 1975, p.22, Foodstore Advertising), I deferred consideration of what was then a new advertising campaign—the now familiar “Wonder of Woolworth”. Time has given a new perspective to the task and enabled me to write about developments in retailing which I would scarcely have believed possible eleven months ago.

Budgets for the past two or three years have tended to be dominated by speculation and anticipation of alterations in the rate of value added tax. This has led to a number of curious ups and downs in sales of items like durables. This year, however, all eyes are on the prospects for income tax reductions, and the major stores groups are already counting the extra money. Some very lofty figures for volume growth in sales — some as high as six or seven per cent have been bandied around, but it now appears that the budget is likely to be less reflationary than originally expected, although still good news for the UK's retailers who have not seen a sustained upturn in spending since 1972. Nonetheless the retailers themselves seem to be cautious on the prospects for the year. The recent annual statement from Woolworth's chairman demonstrated that if we are having a consumer boom Woolworth for one has not seen much of it. Government statistics would appear to dictate a cautious line as well. Christmas turned out, belatedly, to be good. January was poor with no discernible volume growth over the sales figures for the previous year. But February was good again, with volume sales at 106.5 as against 104.5 the previous year. But there may be signs that consumers are becoming more confident. The credit figures for January were higher than for some time, indicating that the spending public is expecting things to get better this year. The classic cyclical items such as electricals and white goods will undoubtedly do well in 1978. Merchandisers in the semi luxury and luxury areas that always benefit when disposable income goes up should also flourish. But the food retailers seem destined to find their margins squeezed on account of the price war that is raging in the High Street supermarkets. Furniture sales, where there must be a substantial pent up demand following several years of restraint, should also show a recovery. Unlike the last period when retail shares were showing, as a whole, a good premium to the rest of the stockmarket, major food retailers such as Sainsbury and Tesco now have price earnings ratios of less than 10 on an historic basis, while British Home Stores and Marks & Spencer have ratings of 15 and 18 respectively. Clearly the stockmarket is expecting some good 1978 results from the non‐food sector, but is still doubtful about the impact of the price war on the supermarket companies.

In recent years the retail sector has witnessed a spate of merger activity, partly because some companies have been unable to solve difficult trading problems in any other way, and partly because other companies see acquisitions as the only way to achieve rapid growth. For example, there has been Habitat's acquisition of Mothercare; Argyll Foods' purchase of Allied Suppliers; the sale of Woolworth's in October 1982; and, at the time of writing, bids involving UDS and others. While all this activity has been going on, the Government has been coming under increasing pressure from both businessmen and its own backbenchers to clarify merger policy. In this article Stuart Eliot sets out to review current policy towards retail mergers and considers whether any amendments are desirable.

Food—national dietary standards—is a sensitive index of socio‐economic conditions generally; there are others, reflecting different aspects, but none more sensitive. A country that eats well has healthy, robust people; the housewife who cooks hearty, nourishing meals has a lusty, virile family. It is not surprising, therefore, that all governments of the world have a food policy, ranking high in its priorities and are usually prepared to sacrifice other national policies to preserve it. Before the last war, when food was much less of an instrument of government policy than now—there were not the shortages or the price vagaries—in France, any government, whatever its colour, which could not keep down the price of food so that the poor man ate his fill, never survived long; it was—to make use of the call sign of those untidy, shambling columns from our streets which seem to monopolize the television news screens—“out!” Lovers of the Old France would say that the country had been without stable government since 1870, but the explanation for the many changes in power in France in those pre‐war days could be expressed in one word—food!