“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 [...]

From just after the Second World War until early in the 1980s, my Uncle Sam had a small grocery store in north east London. When he first opened the shop, after his ‘apprenticeship’ with Jack Cohen and his time as a desert rat, the area was largely Jewish and so he stocked jars of gefilte [...]

As a ‘returning Indian’, OXIRM researcher Malobi Kar recently had the opportunity of comparing retail experiences between the UK and India. Here is her report.

As a researcher who specialises in the field of customer relationship management, I will have to admit that all my retail experiences seem to be influenced by the tenets of what [...]