As the Portas Review is published in the week before one of the toughest trading Christmases for some time, Jonathan Reynolds reflects on its contribution to a longstanding debate on the future of Britain’s High Streets. “Mary’s the first to say that there have been plenty of other reports on saving the High Street. Indeed,
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Jonathan Reynolds
For once, the UK Government has made Retailing one of its sectoral priorities for growth. In the recent Budget, the accompanying Plan for Growth set out eight ways in which the Government will seek to make life easier for the retailer. Retail is subject to a wider range of regulation than any other sector, and
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Jonathan Reynolds
The impact of large food stores on traditional patterns of retailing is a topic that has been of longstanding interest to practitioners, policymakers and academics in the UK for the past thirty years. Attention has increasingly focused on smaller, and arguably more vulnerable, locations for such developments, not least in the light of changes in
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Jonathan Reynolds
The Institute has recently completed an update of its pioneering work on retail productivity back in 2004. This time, the work was undertaken for Skillsmart Retail, which was particularly interested in the effects of the recession, e-commerce and internationalisation on retail productivity and skills. The full report will be available from Skillsmart shortly. In the
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Jonathan Reynolds
In 1974, Dr David Thorpe, then based at the Manchester Business School before his move to become Head of Research at the John Lewis Partnership, wrote about the central importance of what he called the ‘external’ areas from which retail firms might be expected to benefit in undertaking research, which included site selection. He remarked:
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Jonathan Reynolds
Posted by:
Jonathan Reynolds
“A glamour hangs over the glittering booth, and a tantalizing air of clever new things”. Selfridges? Abercrombie & Fitch? No – Henry James describing a WHSmith railway bookstall in 1888. Today a good bookshop still provides a focal point for its community, a peaceful haven to while away spare hours, and a stimulating environment in
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Alan Giles
In 2009 we posted the first part of an assessment of grocery home delivery. Given the barnstorming results of the online grocery services of the major UK supermarket retailers over Christmas, we thought we should post the second part of the assessment: a blow-by-blow account of the service provided by each. For the record, Tesco
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Christine Curthbertson
So-called Location-Based Services applications have been around for some time and have often been described as ‘solutions in search of problems’. But early implementations were clunky and unreliable, GPS expensive and not widely available and consumer unused to or unwilling to pay significantly for such information. Contemporary applications show much greater promise. Two developments now
Posted by:
Jonathan Reynolds
Posted by:
Jonathan Reynolds