This paper examines strategies used by durable goods retailers to create a mass market in interwar Britain, via a case-study of domestic furniture. Interwar demand for new furniture witnessed particularly rapid growth - mainly owing to the extension of the market to lower-income groups. A number...

Promotional activity proved key to the success of department stores in fending off competition from the expanding chain stores by drawing in customers to their large, central, premises. This paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative archival data to examine the promotional methods...

Department stores represented one of the most advertising-intensive sectors of American inter-war retailing. Yet it has been argued that a competitive spiral of high advertising spending, to match the challenge of other local department stores, contributed to a damaging inflation of costs that...

The 1930s witnessed Britain’s first major boom in working-class owner-occupation. Purchasers typically came from cramped, rented, inner-urban accommodation, and, only a few years previously, would not have considered the possibility of buying a new house. Such perceptions were transformed by...