The objective of this article is to reconceptualize understanding of the economic and spatial processes of corporate restructuring and market exit. We ask what economic logic explains plant closure and firms’ exit from industries, and develop a comprehensive perspective on the nature of the...

Aims and Background: In this retail sector study commissioned by OECD to inform the expert meeting on distribution services to be held on November 17 2010, the aims are to: * explain how and why the retail sector has internationalised its operations over the past two decades and the...

In this article we contribute to a growing body of literature concerned with the socio-cultural dynamics of learning and adaptation inside firms. Specifically, we apply a ‘competence-based’ view of the firm to a newly emerging breed of retail-industry transnational corporations (TNCs). We...

Ethical trade, involving corporate codes of conduct for sites of production, has become a key means through which labour in retailers’ global supply chains is regulated. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that retail corporations vary markedly in their approaches to ethical trade and that such...

Purpose – To examine the impact of the merger of the two largest US department store companies on the competitive state of the sector and specifically the anti-trust implications of the consolidation. Design/methodology/approach – Based on semi-structured interviews with leading US...

At a time of increasing government concern with the economic health of UK town centres and high streets, and with an independent inquiry (led by Mary Portas) on Revitalising the High Street to report by the end of 2011, this paper seeks to make four contributions. First, to inject into an...

One important element of recent conceptualizations of the distinctive nature and challenges of retail transnational corporations (TNCs) is a focus on the mutual transformation of both the markets entered by the retail TNCs and, reciprocally, of the organizational structures of the firms...

The last decade has witnessed an acceleration of retail foreign direct investment into a range of emerging markets across East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, led by a small cohort of food and general merchandise retailers from Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, North...

This paper examines the market entry of the UK’s largest retailer (Tesco) into the USA. Tesco’s launch of a new brand – Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets – in virgin territory is a bold move, notwithstanding the firm’s considerable success with its overseas investment strategy (which...

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was noted that retailers in Britain had started providing increased variety and fashionability to their customers, had added mid-season purchasing to their previous two-season calendars, and that a high fashion and low price ‘throwaway market’ had...