Ebook: Neighbourhood Retailing : Policy, People and Partnerships

These joint special issues of the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management bring together a number of the papers that were originally presented at the CIRM Conference held in Manchester in September 2003. The theme of the conference was “Neighbourhood retailing: policy, people and partnerships”, and it supplemented the event of the previous year which had a similar focus on issues of retail provision at the local level (IJRDM, 31, issues 8 and 9). As in 2002, the papers have been allocated between two issues: this one (Number 11) contains five of the more academic oriented ones, while Number 12 (Retail Insights) has four contributions with a greater practitioner orientation. Research into local shopping per se,and into the independent retailer, the main supplier of local provision, has developed considerable momentum since 2000. Once long neglected areas of study, they have come to the fore as various government policy agendas ranging from social exclusion to sector competitiveness have all recognised that good shopping provision accessible to all parts of the population is a key factor in the social, economic and physical health of communities. In the UK, the publication of draft Planning Policy Statement 6 (PPS 6) in the past year has placed further emphasis on the vitality and viability of retailing in centres lower down the urban hierarchy. Many such places appear to have stagnated or even declined relative to the largest centres where retail investment has become concentrated. Meanwhile, the independent retailer is under ever increasing threat from the large multiples such as Tesco and Sainsbury, who are now opening small formats in local centres to complement their off-centre and out-of-town superstores. This can bring both benefits and disbenefits. While competition should arguably provide lower prices and better service, it runs the serious risk of ultimately diminishing choice and replicating the homogeneous appearance of our multiple dominated high streets in local parades. The disappearance of the independent trader also takes away an important source of retail innovation, and a potential place of employment for groups who may be otherwise marginalised in the workforce. Neither should the social role played by such retailers be disregarded: as a focal point for interaction, they are often embedded within local social networks forming part of the invisible glue that binds communities together. There is no one easy solution to what is a complex set of issues. For example, small retailers will often identify multiples as the main source of their problems, yet there are numerous examples of independents trading well where there is a strong multiple presence. Rather more critical is the skills and knowledge base of the small retailer, and their ability to identify and exploit market segments which the large company cannot do. Amongst other elements, business support, land use planning, and competition policy are all important factors that need to come together, tailored in whatever combination is appropriate to the needs of individual localities. However, this is not to imply that top down approaches are the panacea for the problems of neighbourhood shopping and the independent trader. Critical to the success of more integrated and holistic approaches is the need for retailers to cooperate and work together with themselves, other community stakeholders, and local and national government. “Independent” retailers can gain much by becoming inter-dependent ones: policy, people and partnerships need to operate both synergistically and symbiotically. The papers in these two issues examine a number of dimensions of neighbourhood shopping, and show how the development of approaches to maintaining the vitality and viability of local retail provision requires a variety of factors to be taken in to account. The first of these is the nature of local shopping behaviour and the issue of choice. The desirability for people to have a variety of shops to choose from is almost a sine qua non of modern consumer society, but as Malcolm Kirkup and his colleagues argue, the nature of choice involves more than having two or three shops within easy travelling distance. Through their focus group research in suburban neighbourhoods in Portsmouth, they demonstrate how individuals’ circumstances and characteristics can significantly reduce a broad theoretical provision of food stores to a limited set of perceived real choices, which is what policy makers need to take into account. The value of undertaking qualitative research to understand more fully the complex nature of consumer disadvantage is further underlined in the paper by Lucy Woodliffe, which reports her exploratory research into a group of consumers in Southampton. These two papers are complemented by that of Cliff Guy in the Retail Insights section who examines the availability and prices of healthy food in socially deprived areas of Cardiff. He concludes that neighbourhood food stores play only a limited role in making such foodstuffs available locally, and argues for improved access to larger supermarkets. While much of the current research on local retailing deals with food provision, the paper by Elke Pioch and Ruth Schmidt considers the pressures being faced by pharmacies in the UK and Germany in increasingly deregulated markets, and the role that they play in local communities. They discuss the inherent tension between the roles of pharmacies as retailers and as healthcare providers, and the need for pharmacists to develop their business skills as much as their professional ones to remain competitive. Indeed, the topic of training and support for the independent retail sector is one that has developed considerably in recent years, and the paper by Salim Jiwa and his colleagues in the Insights issue presents an example of this. E-business can provide potential growth opportunities for small scale retailers, particularly if they are of a specialist type, but there remain considerable barriers to their fulfilment, one of which is the lack of awareness of what is required to succeed in this channel. The “Netrepreneur” simulation game described in the paper can be used as a teaching aid, and makes available a range of activities and functions that closely resemble actual e-business operations. The final major theme relates to planning policy and the management of centres. The new emphasis that the UK government appears to be placing on places lower down the hierarchy raises the question of how far the experiences of planning and managing larger places can be drawn on to develop best practice for smaller ones. The paper by Gary Warnaby et al.examines how place marketing activities are planned and implemented in town centres, and examines the implications for local ones. The importance of developing effective partnership arrangements between public and private sectors is emphasised, a lesson that also emerges in the paper by Mike Phillips and Chris Swaffin-Smith in their study of the adoption of a partnership approach in market towns. The value of working together is also made clear in the paper by Stephen Doyle in the Insights issue on the regeneration of Harlem, New York. He describes how the people of the area became actively involved in the regeneration of their neighbourhood and developed community gardens where residents grow their own produce and sell it in their own form of farmers’ market. Finally, the article by Greg Lawrence, also in the Insights issue, addresses the vital issue of retail crime reduction. He shows that a thoughtful and considered approach to the design of stores and their immediate environments can do much to deter potential criminals, an important consideration given the displacement of crime from city centres to local ones as a consequence of the widespread use of CCTV and other measures in the former. Theft and robbery can quickly undermine an area’s retail provision as insurance becomes prohibitive and owners close down rather than face intimidating behaviour. Again, this points to the need for close collaboration and cooperation between retailers themselves, and between them and public sector bodies for effective measures to be implemented. David Bennison Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, Manchester, UK Previously published in: International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Volume 32, Number 11, 2004